Dr. Colin McCormick is the Chief Innovation Officer at Carbon Direct and an Adjunct Professor at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. Trained as an experimental physicist, he has a wide range of experience in energy and climate technology development, science and technology policy, and data science. His research focus areas include technology development priorities for carbon dioxide removal, pathways for industrial deep decarbonization, and remote sensing methods for greenhouse gas emissions monitoring.
Colin has consulted with the World Resources Institute, the World Bank, the Global Green Growth Institute, WattTime, and the Energy Futures Initiative. His recent publications include Clearing the Air: A Federal RD&D Initiative and Management Plan for Carbon Dioxide Removal Technologies (with Energy Futures Initiative); ICEF 2018 Roadmap: Direct Air Capture of Carbon Dioxide (with Columbia University); Technological Carbon Removal in the United States (with the World Resources Institute); and Getting to Neutral: Options for Negative Carbon Emissions in California (with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory).
Colin served as Senior Technical Advisor at the US Department of Energy during the Obama Administration, where he oversaw R&D strategy and coordination across the applied energy offices. Colin holds a PhD in atomic and optical physics from UC Berkeley and was a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).