Mary Ann Piette is the Interim Associate Lab Director of the Energy Technologies Area (ETA) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She manages a research enterprise of about 700 staff and affiliates, including 120 principal investigators working across a broad set of technology R&D programs to accelerate decarbonization. ETA’s research programs range from demand-side energy efficiency and grid integration to hydrogen technologies, energy storage, and renewable energy systems. Piette facilitates collaboration with partners including manufacturers, utilities, state agencies, cities, aggregators, non-profits, engineering firms, building owners, and many others. She has also helped shape Berkeley Lab’s culture to support inclusion, diversity. equity and accountability.
As a Senior Scientist she also conducts research on building technologies, modeling, and analysis; commercial and residential building systems integration; grid interactive communications and integration with electric vehicles, storage, and photovoltaics. Her recent work explores how to accelerate decarbonization while ensuring equity and affordability. Mary Ann leads the new California Load Flexibility Research and Deployment Hub (CalFlexHub) pioneering new technologies, and advanced communication and controls to enable buildings and EVs to receive automated dynamic pricing and GHG signals.
She has been a visiting researcher at both the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Newcastle, Australia and the Chalmers University of Technology, Department of Building Services Engineering in Gothenburg, Sweden. Mary Ann has authored over 115 peer reviewed publications related to energy systems and recently won a Lifetime Achievement Award at Berkeley Lab for her work in energy-efficient and grid-interactive buildings research. As part of energy modeling teams at Berkeley Lab she has received two R&D 100 awards for the development of tools to evaluate commercial building and city level energy efficiency and decarbonization strategies. She is a founding Board member of the OpenADR Alliance. Mary Ann has an MS in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley and a Licentiate in Building Services Engineering from the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.