Jeremy Kasper named ACEP director
Jeremy Kasper has been named director of the Alaska Center for Energy and Power after serving as interim director since May 2022.
Jeremy Kasper has been named director of the Alaska Center for Energy and Power. Kasper has served as the interim director since May 9, 2022, when ACEP founder Gwen Holdmann stepped down to take the role of UAF associate vice chancellor of research for Innovation and industry partnerships.
After graduating from Reed College in 1999 with a bachelor of arts in physics, Kasper moved to Fairbanks in 2000. After stints with the UA Office of Information Technology and the Water and Environmental Research Center at UAF, he started his Ph.D. at the UAF School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences. He received a doctorate in oceanography in 2010 and conducted postdoctoral research at UAF’s Institute of Marine Science before an appointment as a postdoctoral investigator at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Department of Physical Oceanography. In 2012, Jeremy returned to UAF as a research assistant professor with ACEP. In 2014, he became the director of the Alaska Hydrokinetic Energy Research Center which included developing ACEP’s Tanana River Hydrokinetic Test Site. Under his leadership, hydrokinetic research expenditures at UAF have more than doubled and AHERC merged with the U.S. Department of Energy designated Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center to create the Pacific Marine Energy Center, a consortium between UAF, Oregon State University and the University of Washington and a global leader in marine energy research.
Since assuming the role of interim director in 2022, Kasper helped ACEP to grow to a team of 75 faculty, staff, and students and helped to bring in new funding totaling $10.7 million. Kasper’s vision for ACEP’s future is, through applied renewable energy and distributed energy research, to improve the quality of life and community resilience of Alaskans.
Kasper said he is proud of the past and current hard working team at ACEP that is helping to bring the organization recognition as a leading research institute, a trustworthy and reliable partner to Alaska utilities, communities and private stakeholders, and a steward and transformer of how UA and UAF research supports Alaska.