VREF support the “Lee Schipper Memorial Scholarship for Sustainable Transport and Energy Efficiency” since 2018. The scholarship targets supporting the momentum of Lee Schipper’s contribution to the enrichment of the international policy dialogue in the fields of sustainable transport and energy efficiency. Lee Schipper, international physicist, researcher, musician and co-founder of EMBARQ (today the Urban Mobility program of the World Resources Institute (WRI) Ross Center for Sustainable Cities) inspired and shaped the thinking of a generation of students and professionals.

2023 years Call for Applications is open until May 12, 2023. (Previous deadline – April 12 – has been extended)

Looking for an opportunity to catalyze sustainable, people-centered urban mobility? The Lee Schipper Memorial Scholarship wants to help you transform ideas into reality.

The Schipper family, the World Resources Institute’s Ross Center for Sustainable Cities, and Volvo Research and Education Foundations are pleased to announce that applications are now open for the 2023 Lee Schipper Memorial Scholarship for Sustainable Transport and Energy Efficiency. The Scholarship, provided jointly by the Schipper Family and WRI, will award two extraordinary candidates up to US$10,000 each to advance transformative research in efficient and sustainable transport. In addition, a young researcher from Africa will be awarded an additional US$10,000 for the fourth consecutive year.

Dr. Leon J. Schipper (“Lee” or “Mr. Meter”) was a co-founder of EMBARQ, WRI’s Sustainable Mobility Program, who dedicated his professional life to the efficient use of energy in mobility. An international physicist, researcher, and studied musician, Lee was a giant in the energy efficiency field. This scholarship celebrates his vision and the bold challenges to conventional wisdom he gave to the field.

2022 scholars Robert Ambunda and Lucía Game will present their research at the Transforming Transportation conference on March 15, 2023.

2023 years Call for Applications is open until May 12, 2023. (Previous deadline – April 12 – has been extended)

About the Scholarship

The Scholarship aims to expand contributions to sustainable transport and energy efficiency research and policy dialogue. It prioritizes “iconoclastic” contributions that have clear, transformative outputs and contribute to measurable changes. Proposals relating to different aspects of policy dialogue are welcome, including data collection and quality, diagnosis through data analysis (qualitative and quantitative), policy analysis and evaluation, and interdisciplinary and international comparative analysis.

Who’s Eligible?

The scholarship is open to young researchers, which it defines as someone with five or fewer years of experience since their last academic degree (Master’s or Ph.D.), and who has not yet turned 36 years by the expression of interest submission deadline (born after April 12, 1987[1]). There are no geographic restrictions on Scholarship applicants, so young researchers and students of all national origins and fields are eligible to apply. While applications should be submitted in English, research may be completed in other languages to enhance its impact. 

Applications will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

  • Consistency with Lee Schipper’s contributions 
  • Alignment with the idea of sustainable transport and energy efficiency 
  • Creation of innovative, transformational outcomes (“real impact”) 
  • Feasibility (timely, realistic) 
  • Applicant (affiliation, background, previous contributions, references)

The African Scholarship supports a young researcher from the African continent currently living and working in Africa. In addition to the global selection criteria above, applicants to the African Scholarship should also:

  • Hold citizenship of an African country
  • Currently live and work in Africa
  • Be associated with an African-based institution (or an African branch of an international institution)

How to Apply (today!)

The Scholarship guidelines describe the scholarship application process in more detail. Please complete an expression of interest here by April 12, 2023. Up to seven candidates for each of the Global and African Scholarships will advance to the next selection round and be notified around mid-May 2023, when a more detailed research proposal will be required. The Scholarship Committee will announce the final awardees in July 2023. 


[1] The eligibility periods can be extended in case of specific and properly documented circumstances such as parental leave. In case of parental leave, the applicant may request up to 18 months extension of eligibility for each child born. The Scholarship Committee will assess the eligibility period on the basis of evidence provided at the time of submission of the expression of interest. 

The Scholarship Guidelines [link to pdf] detail the eligibility requirements. The scholarship is open to young researchers, which it defines as someone with five or fewer years of experience since their last academic degree (Master’s or Ph.D.), and who has not yet turned 36 years by the expression of interest submission deadline. There are no geographic restrictions on Scholarship applicants, so young researchers and students of all national origins and fields are eligible to apply. While applications should be submitted in English, research may be completed in other languages to enhance its impact. 

The African Scholarship supports a young researcher from the African continent currently living and working in Africa. In addition to the global selection criteria above, applicants to the African Scholarship should also:

  • Hold citizenship of an African country
  • Currently live and work in Africa
  • Be associated with an African-based institution (or an African branch of an international institution) 

All applications will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

  • Consistency with Lee Schipper’s contributions 
  • Alignment with the idea of sustainable transport and energy efficiency 
  • Creation of innovative, transformational outcomes (“real impact”) 
  • Feasibility (timely, realistic) 
  • Applicant (affiliation, background, previous contributions, references)

The Scholarship guidelines [link to pdf] describe the scholarship application process in more detail. The 2023 scholarship deadlines:

  • Complete an expression of interest when the call opens in 2024. (2023 years call is closed)
  • 2023 years call: Up to seven candidates for each of the Global and African Scholarships will advance to the next selection round and be notified around mid-May 2023, when a more detailed research proposal will be required. 
  • The Scholarship Committee will announce the final awardees in July 2023.

To keep Lee’s legacy alive, the Schipper Family and EMBARQ, the sustainable urban mobility initiative of the World Resources Institute’s Ross Center for Sustainable Cities, created the Lee Schipper Memorial Scholarship for Sustainable Transport and Energy Efficiency. The Scholarship is governed by an advisory board of selected experts and esteemed colleagues who guide the scholarship and make the final selection of the scholars.

Advisory Board:

  • Holger Dalkmann, Founder & CEO, Sustain 2030 
  • Ramon Munoz-Raskin, Program Leader, World Bank Group
  • Dario Hidalgo, Professor of Transport and Logistics, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana
  • Nancy Kete, Owner, Kete Consulting
  • Wei-Shiuen Ng, Economic Affairs Officer, United Nations ESCAP
  • – Sam Zimmerman, Urban Transport Advisor (retired), World Bank

Contact Us

If you are interested in knowing more about the Scholarship, or if you have ideas that you would like to share with us, please send us an email to cities@wri.org

The following was adapted from an obituary written by Kirk R. Smith in Energy Policy

He inspired and shaped the thinking of a generation

The “Lee Schipper Memorial Scholarship for Sustainable Transport” supports the momentum of Lee Schipper’s contribution to the enrichment of the international policy dialogue in sustainable transport and energy efficiency.

Lee Schipper, an international physicist, researcher, musician, who inspired and shaped the thinking of a generation of students and professionals. Lee was widely recognized for enriching policy dialogue with his passion for data and challenging conventional wisdom. Lee passed away in August 2011 after a brief and difficult battle with pancreatic cancer.

Highly productive career

Most recently, Lee was a senior research scientist at both University of California Berkeley’s Global Metropolitan Studies and at Stanford University’s Precourt Institute of Energy Efficiency conducting research and policy analysis on efficient energy use in transportation systems. He was co-founder of EMBARQ, the World Resources Institute’s Center for Sustainable Transport, and remained as a senior associate emeritus. Over a highly productive career, he worked at the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, the International Energy Agency in Paris, Shell International in London, as well as being Fulbright Scholar at the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics in Stockholm. He was a guest researcher at the World Bank, VVS Tekniska Foerening, the OECD Development Center, and the Stockholm Environment Institute. 

Sharing the Nobel Peace Prize

Lee authored more than 100 technical papers and a number of books on energy economics and transportation, including Energy Efficiency and Human Activity: Past Trends, Future Prospects (1992) with Stephen Meyers, Richard Howarth, and Ruth Steiner. He served on the editorial boards of five major journals and was a member of the Swedish Board for Transportation and Communications Research. For four years he was a member of the U.S. National Academy of Science’s Transportation Research Board’s Committee on Sustainable Transport and Committee on Developing Countries. He worked in IPCC’s Mitigation group (WGIII), for the third and fourth assessments, thus sharing the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. 

Proponent of sensible policies

In Berkeley in the early 1970s, Professor John Holdren, President Obama’s Science Advisor, was the first person to hire Lee as an energy specialist. He notes that ‘‘Lee was one of the first people to point out that people don’t want to consume energy, but they want to consume energy services, like transportation, comfortable rooms, cold beer and so forth. And that there was an enormous variation in the amount of energy needed to perform those services.’’ Lee’s academic break came in 1976, between the first and second international oil shocks, when he published an influential paper in Science pointing out that Sweden consumed far less energy per unit of economic activity than the United States did. Lee shifted his primary attention to transport in the 1980s, becoming one of the premiere scholars in the field and a tireless proponent of sensible policies for public and private transport. 

Master communicator

Lee was a force of nature—an irrepressible fountain of energy, insight, humor, and intelligence. And a master communicator. Part of this was being an irrepressible iconoclast with a wonderful knack of turning a phrase to excellent effect. He could make the basically dry subject of energy efficiency become exciting in ways that engaged students, the media, and policymakers. Evidence for this was publishing 15 letters to the editor in the New York Times on energy efficiency—a nearly legendary achievement. He was also kind, generous, and unselfish with his friends and students and with the grace and self-confidence to be curious and inquisitive about what others were doing.

Vibraphonist

Lee was multi-talented beyond his science. As a UC Berkeley student and vibraphonist, he led his jazz group to victory at the Notre Dame Jazz Festival in 1967. He would reprise the role as band leader with an ad hoc jazz group, Lee Schipper and the Mitigators, who performed primarily in conjunction with energy-related conferences. He was one of the world’s experts on Wilhelm Furtwangler, perhaps the greatest symphonic and operatic conductor of the 20th century, and collected one of the most complete sets of his recordings. Lee seemed to pick up languages effortlessly, speaking fluent Swedish, German, and French, and passable Norwegian, Danish, Spanish, and Portuguese. Even a bit of Russian. 

2022

Africa scholar: Robert Ambunda, PhD candidate, Stellenbosch University

Lucía Game, PhD candidate, University of California, Berkeley

2021

African scholar: Susan Gichuna, PhD candidate, University of Nairobi

Tamara Kutchner, PhD candidate, University of California, Berkeley

Wei Wei, PhD candidate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

2020

African scholar: Abisai Konstantinus, Postdoctoral researcher, University of Cape Town

Jungwoo Chun, PhD candidate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Fariba Siddiq, PhD candidate, University of California, Los Angeles

2019

Teddy Forscher, PhD candidate, University of California, Berkeley

Valentina Montoya Robledo, SJD candidate, Harvard University

2018

Junia Compostella, PhD candidate, University of California, Davis

Jaime Soza Parra, PhD candidate, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

2017

Joanna Moody, PhD candidate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Rafael Pereira, PhD candidate, University of Oxford

2016

Akshima Chate, Senior Fellow, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI)

Fiamma Perez-Prada, PhD candidate, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

2015

Gwyn Kash, PhD candidate, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

2014

Madeline Brozen, Complete Streets Initiative Program Manager, University of California, Los Angeles

Erik Vergel-Tovar, PhD candidate, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

2013

Sudhir Gota, Technical Advisor, Clean Air Initiative Asia

Fei Li, Ph.D. candidate, New York University