Personal transportation contributes almost 20% to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions when including emissions from the production of fuels and vehicles, and that number is rising. Marco’s work informs pathways to decarbonize personal transportation in the U.S. to meet corresponding climate targets. In particular, he evaluates how the difference in greenhouse gas emissions and ownership costs between regular cars and electric cars changes across different vehicle classes, across space (due to differences across the country in travel patterns, traffic conditions, local climate, and electricity mixes), and across time (due to technological progress in the automotive sector). As a former part-time web developer, he also enjoys building interactive websites that inform consumers directly about his research results. The first such website, carboncounter.com, has been featured in the New York Times and had over 120,000 visitors since its launch.
Marco is a PhD Candidate in Engineering Systems at MIT’s Institute for Data Systems and Society (IDSS) and a researcher at the Trancik lab. Previously, he completed a Master’s in Environmental Engineering and a Bachelor’s in Environmental Science at ETH Zurich. To help find solutions to socio-technical problems in energy and transportation outside of research, Marco has helped organize the first MIT Policy Hackathon in 2018. He also lead a team of impact assessment fellows for the MIT Climate Colab whose goal it is to estimate the environmental benefits of proposals submitted to that platform. Marco currently captains the IDSS hockey team and is on a continuous mission to maximize his ice time in winter.