Melissa Pappas
The 2024 TIME100 Climate list has selected Vanessa Chan, Jonathan and Linda Brassington Practice Professor in Materials Science and Engineering, in the Leader category. Chan, who is currently on leave from Penn Engineering, is serving as the Chief Commercialization Officer and the Director of the Office of Technology Transitions at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Since joining DOE in January 2021, Chan has helped drive the agency’s, including its 17 National Labs, ’policies and programs to commercialize clean technologies developed by both the public and the private sectors.
Initiated in 2023, the TIME100 Climate list honors individuals around the world who have made significant contributions to addressing climate change and promoting sustainability. Time Magazine selected this year’s awardees, who include decision makers, executives, researchers and innovators, based on their recent actions and their measurable, scalable achievements.
Chan’s groundbreaking work in catalyzing sustainable innovation and moving clean energy, industrial and manufacturing technology from the lab to the marketplace has made her a transformative leader in the climate and economic resiliency spheres. Her novel approaches to enabling the private sector to lead the country’s clean transition — including enhancing the commercialization knowledge base via deep market-based research and analysis, creating a new risk assessment framework, and expanding access to the extraordinary expertise, intellectual property and facilities resident in the National Lab complex — are advancing real-world adoption of diverse and effective solutions.
Chan’s ongoing contributions and commitment to innovation are grounded in her work at Penn Engineering. After joining the faculty in 2017, Chan worked to enhance the education engineers receive to promote a commercialization mindset, including the opportunity to understand supply chains and commercial ecosystems, as well as to develop and hone the business skills necessary for marketplace success after graduation.
In addition to her government and education achievements, Chan has been instrumental in advancing climate solutions in the private sector, where she has worked across a wide economic and organizational range, from academic research and development, to Fortune 1000 companies, to startups. She has two decades of experience helping organizations grow at the interface of technology and business.
When asked by TIME what the single most important action the public or a specific company or government needs to take in the next year to advance the climate agenda, she answered, “Go first, and take risks together. For clean energy technologies to be fully deployed, they need to get down the cost curve but the risks and investments needed are bigger than one entity is willing to take. Everyone is first in line to be 8th or 9th but no one is first in line to be first because the risks are so high. As an ecosystem, we need to be bold in our collaboration between finance, private sector companies, government, philanthropy, insurance industry, manufacturers, etc. All of us need to move from our traditional way of doing business.”
Read Chan’s full Time Magazine interview here.