Shardul is a second-year MBA student and an Innovator Fellow, with a Dean’s Scholarship at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management. Originally from India, he received his undergraduate degree from Birla Institute of Technology and Sciences, Pilani; in Mechanical Engineering (Marine). On graduation he worked almost exclusively as an engineering officer aboard merchant marine ships. The job not only took him to four continents but also gave him the technical understanding of energy efficiency technologies.

 Shardul started working with the Energy Efficiency Center when he began his MBA studies, and was a summer intern at the center. As part of his internship at the EEC, Shardul worked with Energy Solutions (ES), Oakland, an energy efficiency consulting firm in the Bay Area. The contract with ES involved business development of a new data-mining software service. The software is intended to design utility rebate programs with greatest impact.

 His main work with the EEC has been market research on emerging technologies for Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) and Southern California Edison (SCE). He will focus on assessing the market potential of emerging technologies in the respective territories of these utilities. Concurrently he will work on predicting the penetration rate of a particular emerging technology in these territories; and assisting in their early deployment.

 He is also working on creating a financial tool which will conjoin the E3 calculator with a market diffusion tool to provide complete cost benefit analyses of a utility’s investment in emerging technologies. He has also created a resource allocation and budgeting tool, which was born out of the requirements for a San Diego Gas & Electric project. Shardul was part of the team that finalized the Market Assessment Assistance Program (MAAP) draft, and created the questionnaire to identify subject matter experts to interview for research. He is currently involved in summarizing the outreach material for the center.

 At the GSM, Shardul is a founding member of the Clean Tech Club and the Director of Outreach for the Big Bang! Business plan competition.