Francis Vanek

Francis Vanek grew up in Ithaca, NY, was a Rotary Exchange student in Japan from 1985 to 1986, and graduated from Cornell University in 1991 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Asian Studies. After working with the Nissan Motor organization he returned to graduate school and earned a doctorate in Systems Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1998. He taught at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, from 1998 to 2001, and then returned to Cornell University to join the faculty, where he is currently Senior Lecture in Civil and Environmental Engineering. His teaching and research focuses on renewable energy, sustainable transportation, and green building, and he is the lead author of the textbooks Energy Systems Engineering: Evaluation and Implementation (editions released in 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2021) and Sustainable Transportation Systems Engineering, both from McGraw-Hill. Since 2002 he has been a resident with his family of the Ecovillage at Ithaca cohousing community, which pursues energy efficiency and renewable energy as part of its sustainability mission.