2025 EPRG Spring Seminar

Srinivasan Keshav is the Robert Sansom Professor of Computer Science in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge.

His interests lie broadly at the intersection of computer science and sustainability.

He received a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1991 and was subsequently employed at AT&T Bell Labs and Cornell University. Most recently, he was a Professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Association for Computing Machinery, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, and a Distinguished Alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

Clara Poletti is a Member of the Board of ARERA, the independent Italian Regulatory Authority for Energy, Networks and Environment. She also serves as Chair of the Board of Regulators of ACER, the European Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators and is ARERA’s delegate to CEER, the Council of European Energy Regulators.

In 1997, Clara contributed to the establishment of the Regulatory Authority for Electricity and Gas and has since been involved in the regulation of the energy sectors, water services and waste management, at both the national and European levels.

From 2007 to 2011, Clara served as the Director of IEFE, the research centre of Bocconi University on energy and environmental economics and policy. She was also involved in the founding of the Centre on Regulation in Europe (CERRE), where she currently holds the position of Vice-chair of the Board of Directors. Additionally, she is a member of the Advisory Board of the Florence School of Regulation and of the Board of Directors of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI).

Claire Worsdall is a senior economist at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), leading a multi-disciplinary analytical team working across networks, energy systems and planning policy.

She has been a government economist for 17 years, and has worked in posts in Defra, Communities and Local Government, and the Department for Transport before joining DESNZ last year.

Previous roles have focused on planning policy, environmental analysis of transport policy, including transport’s contribution to meeting the UK’s carbon budgets, and the economic appraisal of major infrastructure projects, including HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail.

Clothilde’s work focuses on ensuring SSEN Distribution has a clear long-term strategy in place. Having led work on the ED2 business planning process, Clothilde is now also leading business planning activities for the next regulatory price control, ED3.

Prior to joining SSEN Distribution, Clothilde worked at both Ofwat and Ofgem.

Chiara is Associate Editor of the Cambridge Elements of Public Economics, Cambridge University Press and acted as a Guest Editor of Special Issues for NPJ Urban Sustainability, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Regional Science Policy and Practice and Scienze Regionali – The Italian Journal of Regional Science.

Her research interests are in public economics, analysing the socioeconomic implications of public involvement, with a focus specifically on state-owned enterprises, along with interest in regional and urban issues.

She has collaborated with several research institutions, including CERN and the Italian Space Agency, to evaluate, from an economic perspective, the impact of investment in science, the space economy and research infrastructures. She has been involved in several international projects, funded through competitive tenders, on public enterprises, especially in the electricity sector, public investment, science and space economy, to name a few.

She teaches a course on cost benefit analysis at the undergraduate level, and courses on policies for research and innovation and regional economics and policy at the masters level.

She was the organiser of the 4th European Conference of the Society for Benefit Cost Analysis, held in Milan in 2023. Her research has appeared in international journals, including the European Journal of Political Economy, the Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, and Regional Studies.

David is a director at Progressive Energy, a low carbon project development company specialising in carbon capture and storage (CCS) and low carbon hydrogen. He has been Progressive Energy’s project director for the HyNet project since its inception.

At the forefront of the development of CCS and low carbon hydrogen in the UK, David holds a deep understanding of the technical, commercial and regulatory structures necessary for project development and deployment.

David holds degrees from Cambridge, Warwick and MIT, is a Fellow and Past President of the Institution of Gas Engineers and Managers and is a member of the CCS Ministerial Council.