Congratulations to our distinguished research fellows 2026: Prof. Dr. Russell McKenna

Congratulations to Prof. Dr. Russell McKenna from ETH Zurich on his selection as Distinguished Research Fellow 2026! Russell McKenna was selected by a four-member external selection committee consisting of Prof. Dr. Alexander Benlian (TU Darmstadt), Prof. Dr. Frank Meisel (CAU Kiel), Prof. Dr. Nadine Riedel (University of Münster) and Prof. Dr. Nicholas Zacharias (University of Jena) from a field of 26 candidates.

Russell McKenna will be a guest at the Chair of Business Administration, in particular Energy Economics, from 26.05.-05.06.2026 and from 05.-09.10.2026. Together with Prof. Dr. Möst and Dr. Hannes Hobbie, he will work on a project on scale effects in highly-renewable distributed energy systems. In particular, this leads to concrete research questions around the “optimal scale” for decentralized renewable energy systems and the optimal level of self-sufficiency, both in a given context with existing infrastructure and based on “green field” considerations.

Russell McKenna has been Professor of Energy System Analysis at the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering at ETH Zurich and Head of the Laboratory for Energy System Analysis at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) since 2022. Previously, he was Professor of Energy Transition at the University of Aberdeen, UK, and Professor of Energy Systems Analysis at the Danish Technical University (DTU). From 2009 to 2018, he spent his postdoctoral years at the Chair of Energy Economics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), where he completed his habilitation in Business Administration (BWL). At the University of Bath, UK, he studied aerospace engineering and earned his doctorate in mechanical engineering/business administration and economics with a focus on industrial energy efficiency. His core research areas are the holistic interdisciplinary assessment of energy technologies and systems, the development and application of energy system models, and the development of resource assessment methods for low-carbon technologies using open data.

Further information on the Distinguished Research Fellowship Program can be found on the program website.