Jose F. Alfaro

Assistant Professor of Practice

Climate + Energy

Food Systems

About

Dr. Alfaro’s work uses engineering and complex systems tools such as Agent-Based Modeling, System Dynamics, and Network Science. In line with his position as a Professor of the Practice, Dr. Alfaro’s scholarship has an applied focus. This has led him to work closely with communities, industry, NGO’s, and government organizations in developing his work. Dr. Alfaro is also the founder and faculty director of Sustainability Without Borders, an interdisciplinary student organization that works with communities to develop ethical partnerships for learning and enhancing sustainability. This organization labors to provide students with a meaningful engaged experience that also increases the capacity of the communities and NGO’s it works with and increases their well-being.

Dr. Alfaro’s scholarship revolves around three main efforts:

Using Industrial Symbiosis at the small-scale to increase communities’ sustainability and well-being
Deploying renewable energy for sustainable development of least industrialized countries
Developing tools for policy and decision-making through computer modeling of socio-technical systems

Publications

R. Martinez Criollo.*, T. Malheiros, J.F. Alfaro. “Municipal Environmental Management Indicators: a Bottom-up Approach Applied to the Colombian Context.” Social Indicators Research, In Press, 2018
S.Graber*, T. Narayanan*, J.F. Alfaro, D. Palit, “Solar Microgrids in Rural India: Consumers’ Willingness to Pay for Attributes of Electricity.” Energy for Sustainable Development, vol. 42, pp. 32-43, 2018
J. F. Alfaro, S. Miller, J. X. Johnson, and R. R. Riolo, “Improving rural electricity system planning: An agent-based model for stakeholder engagement and decision making,” Energy Policy, vol. 101, pp. 317–331, 2017.
S. P. Rimer, J. F. Alfaro, L. B. Stadler, C. G. Davis, and H. G. Winful, “Co-Curricular Programs in Liberia for Student Pipeline into Engineering and Agriculture,” Int. J. Eng. Educ., vol. 30, no. 6, pp. 1602–1612, 2014.
J. Alfaro and S. Miller, “Satisfying the rural residential demand in Liberia with decentralized renewable energy schemes,” Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev., vol. 30, pp. 903–911, Feb. 2014.
J. Alfaro and S. Miller, “Applying Industrial Symbiosis to Smallholder Farms: Modeling a Case Study in Liberia, West Africa,” J. Ind. Ecol., vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 145–154, Nov. 2013.
S. A. Miller, S. Moysey, B. Sharp, and J. F. Alfaro, “A Stochastic Approach to Model Dynamic Systems in Life Cycle Assessment,” J. Ind. Ecol., vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 352–362, 2012.
J. F. Alfaro and S. A. Miller, “Planning the Development of Electricity Grids in Developing Countries: An Initial Approach Using Agent Based Models,” in International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technology (ISSST) IEEE, 2011.
J. F. Alfaro, B. E. Sharp, and S. A. Miller, “Developing LCA Techniques for Emerging Systems: Game Theory, Agent Modeling as Prediction Tools,” in International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technology (ISSST) IEEE, 2010.

Faculty

Jose F. Alfaro

About

Publications