Jaquelin Cochran — Associate Laboratory Director, Strategic Energy Analysis and Decision Sciences

Jaquelin Cochran serves as the associate laboratory director for strategic energy analysis and decision sciences at NREL.

She oversees NREL's research on grid planning, decision science, and systems analysis. This work supports state and national goals, including energy affordability, energy addition, innovation, grid reliability, and streamlined permitting. Modeling tools developed by directorate staff—such as reV, ReEDS™, Sienna, PRECISE™, and dGen™—are widely used by energy stakeholders. Several have garnered prestigious R&D 100 awards.

Cochran has held various leadership roles since joining NREL in 2009, including most recently as director of the Grid Planning and Analysis Center. Her expertise in power systems has enhanced the capacity and reliability of grids—from U.S. cities to multi-country networks. She served as principal investigator for numerous high-impact and first-of-their-kind analyses. These efforts have been scaled to support Tribes, states, and local governments across the United States. Cochran has also led a portfolio of international work focused on increasing energy access and affordability in emerging economies.

Before joining NREL, Cochran was an assistant professor at KIMEP University in Kazakhstan and a Peace Corps volunteer with the Polish Foundation for Energy Efficiency. She served on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committee on Laying the Foundation for New and Advanced Nuclear Reactors in the United States and on Duke Energy's Integrated System and Operations Planning Advisory Council.

Cochran holds a doctorate and a master's degree from the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley, and a bachelor's in public policy/physics from Pomona College.