Ms. Kira Matus :: Sustainability Science Program :: Center for International Development

Sustainability Science Program

Ms. Kira Matus
Center for International Development
Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
79 JFK Street
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
Tel: (1) 617-519-5797
Email: kira_matus "at" ksgphd.harvard.edu
Group affiliation: 2008-9 Doctoral Fellow

Kira Matus is a Doctoral Fellow in Sustainability Science in the Sustainability Science Program at Harvard’s Center for International Development , an EPA STAR graduate fellow, and a doctoral candidate in the Public Policy Program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government . Her research focuses on the application of innovative technology to address sustainable development. She is working with the Green Chemistry Institute to explore the potential of green chemistry as a “leap-frog” technology in the United States, India and China. She is a recipient of the Giorgio Ruffolo Doctoral Fellowship in Sustainability Science (2007) and the Norberg-Bohm Fellowship (2006). Matus received an SM in Technology and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005. While at MIT, she was a research assistant in the Joint Program for the Science and Policy of Global Change . As a part of that group, she worked to quantify the economic impacts of the health effects of urban air pollution on the economies of the United States and China. She was a participant in the Alliance for Global Sustainability ’s Intensive Program on Sustainability graduate student symposium in 2004 in Thailand. Matus is a 2003 graduate of Brown University where she earned an ScB in chemistry. Her faculty hosts at Harvard are William Clark, John Holdren, and Venkatesh Narayanamurti.

Green Chemistry: Leapfrog or Bullfrog? This research uses green chemistry to explore how potentially “leapfrogging” technologies can be deployed to promote sustainable development. The focus is on the investigation of the global implementation of green chemistry, in order to understand how different policies, institutions, and educational systems affect its adoption, and to compare this to the United States case. Field work in India and China explores: multi-sectoral partnerships and collaborations; communication of knowledge from research institutions to industry, and of knowledge needs from industry to the research community; metrics and standards; and regulation and policy, including the impacts of incentives, regulatory uncertainty, accounting and financial regulations, research funding, and how the interaction of policies can either promote or hinder adoption of innovations. The aim is to construct a framework for the circumstances under which the implementation of green chemistry and other leapfrog innovations are viable.