PROFILE

KAREN FISHER-VANDEN ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Claim to Fame: Based on her work with Harvard's China Project, Fisher-Vanden, 45, won a U.S. Department of Energy grant shortly after her 1999 Dartmouth arrival to research technology adoption in China, which she says is not energy efficient. "We need to be thinking about technology and the processes of diffusion and innovation," she says.

In Progress: She and a Brandeis colleague are the only U.S. researchers to receive data directly from Chinese firms, thanks to collaboration with China's National Bureau of Statistics, which sends four researchers to Hanover every summer to construct and analyze data sets and write research papers.Fisher-Vanden has another research grant from the Dickey Center to model potential zones of agreement between developed and developing countries in an international climate change accord.

CV: B.A./B.S. (in math/computer science and economics) from the University of California Davis (1985); M.S. in decision sciences from UCLA (1990); Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard's JFK School of Government (1999).

In the Classroom: Teaches "The Economy vs. the Environment," "Environmental Economics, Policy and Management" and "Integrated Assessment Modeling of Global Climate Change."

Off-Campus: Lives in Hanover with husband Joel Vanden a Tuck professor, and their two children, ages 6 and 7.