About me / Places I've livedDr. Will Usher is an experienced modeller and researcher of energy and infrastructure systems at KTH Royal Institute of Technology where he works as Assistant Professor of Integrated Systems Analysis for Sustainable Development. He joined the devision in 2019 and brings his experience of leading large open-source research projects to the home of OSeMOSYS, CLEWS and OnSSET.
Will also holds Honorary Research Associate status with the Environmental Change Institute at University of Oxford, where previously he led a consortium of 16 researchers to develop a national infrastructure model coupling 7 open-source UK infrastructure simulation models into an integrated system-of-systems model called NISMOD2. This model is used by the UK’s National Infrastructure Commission to support national policy making.
Will Usher’s research interests bridge three related themes: model integration and infrastructure system-of-systems, energy systems optimisation modelling and transition pathways 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.
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 advocate for the principles of open-science and reproducible research.
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 the quantification of the UK’s 4th Carbon Budget for the Committee on Climate Change. Prior to this, Dr. Usher was awarded an MSc Environmental Technology with Distinction from Imperial College London.
