William Usher

Dr. Will Usher is an experienced modeller and researcher of energy and infrastructure systems at KTH Royal Institute of Technology where he works as an Associate Professor of Integrated Systems Analysis for Sustainable Development. He joined the division in 2019. He leads the European Climate and Energy Modelling Forum and is PI in the Climate Compatible Growth project.

Will Usher’s research interests bridge several related themes: model integration and comparison, energy systems optimisation modelling and transition pathways, open data, data governance and Open Science, and decision-making under uncertainty and uncertainty quantification. His research approach is grounded in engineering, but highly interdisciplinary, bringing together economics, environmental and social sciences, a necessary response to the unique research challenges facing us today.

He is course responsible and examiner for the master's course MJ2383 Energy System Economics, Modelling and Indicators for Sustainable Energy Development and supervises multiple master's theses students and PhD students.

As well as authoring peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Energy Policy, Climatic Change and Energy Strategy Reviews, Will is the author of multiple open-source software packages, including the widely used global sensitivity analysis library SALib. He is a trained Software Carpentry instructor and advocates for open-science and reproducible research principles.

Dr. Usher completed his PhD in Energy and Modelling at University College London, where he extended national techno-economic energy systems models to explore greenhouse gas mitigation pathways under decision-dependent uncertainty. Also at UCL he contributed to quantifying the UK’s 4th Carbon Budget for the Committee on Climate Change. Before this, Dr. Usher was awarded an MSc in Environmental Technology with Distinction from Imperial College London.