Mel George

Mel George studies how the design choices embedded in climate models shape who bears the costs of climate policy. His research argues that many apparent tradeoffs in mitigation pathways, among cost, equity and feasibility reflect modeling and policy design choices rather than fixed constraints, and asks how decarbonization pathways can be made both credible and fair. His dissertation, which received the University of Maryland's Distinguished Dissertation Award, developed methods for tracing global effort-sharing principles through to household energy burdens in India and the United States.

George leads GCAM contributions to several of the field's major scenario exercises. He is the lead modeler for the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), whose scenarios are used by more than 100 central banks and financial supervisors worldwide; the lead for the high-emissions marker scenario in ScenarioMIP (CMIP7), feeding the IPCC Seventh Assessment cycle; and the modeling lead for the Country Climate Ambition Program, which has produced scenario analysis for over 20 countries in support of U.S. climate diplomacy and UNFCCC 2035 NDC enhancement. He leads GCAM scenario and protocol development for JustMIP, serves as GCAM modeling lead on the EU Horizon consortia and sits on the steering committee developing new socioeconomic development pathways for the Global South. He is an expert reviewer for the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Cities, a U.S.-nominated author and reviewer for the AR7 Working Group III and CDR/CCUS methodology assessments and a guest editor for Nature Portfolio, Applied Energy, and Climate Policy on the integration of social science into climate modeling, and convenes sessions at the EGU and AGU annual meetings on the same theme.

At UMD, George designed and teaches a graduate course on energy and climate policy and lectures across the School of Public Policy's energy, environment and global-policy courses. He advises doctoral and master's students working on climate equity, human well-being and energy transitions, represents professional-track faculty on the University Senate's Programs, Curricula and Courses Committee. His applied work spans carbon market design under Article 6 and the voluntary markets, the distributional effects of carbon pricing on households and India's mitigation pathways, where he collaborates on development of a state-level GCAM-India model.

Before his doctorate, George spent close to a decade in India's public sector, where he led national energy-security scenario analysis and supported clean-cooking subsidy reform alongside R&D and operations roles in the petroleum ministry. He holds a Ph.D. in Policy Studies from the University of Maryland, a Master of Technology in Energy Science and Engineering from IIT Bombay (Institute Silver Medal) and has held visiting fellowships at IIASA, CIRED and CMCC. He serves on the judging panels for the Montgomery County and Regeneron International Science Fairs.