Nik Sawe is a Policy Analyst in the Industry Program at Energy Innovation, aiming to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from the industrial sector through the propagation of new technologies and policies.
Prior to Energy Innovation, Nik researched environmental neuroeconomics, using a combination of brain imaging, behavioral economics experiments, and econometrics to understand and forecast how individuals make decisions that have environmental impacts, like conservation philanthropy or energy-efficient purchasing, in roles as a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Stanford University. He was also a lecturer at Stanford for many years, teaching courses in environmental decision-making, risk perception, the psychology of science communication, environmental governance, and more.
Nik was drawn to nature from an early age, publishing Wolf Trails, a fiction novel about the lives of wolves, during high school. A physical disability kept him from ecology fieldwork and turned his interest in biology toward neuroscience, working on ways to mitigate stroke damage under Dr. Heng Zhao and Dr. Robert Sapolsky. After several years in the medical device industry, he struck upon the idea to combine his interests in neuroscience and the environment by studying environmental neuroeconomics. He has also combined his love of music composition with environmental science, creating a way to transform ecological data on the impact of climate change on Alaskan forests into music.
Nik holds a Ph.D. in Environment and Resources and a B.S. in Biology from Stanford University and is a past Senior Fellow at the Effective Philanthropy Learning Initiative and Fellow at the Stanford Center for Ethics in Society, the Haas Center for Public Service, and the Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society.
