Marc Shapiro

Marc is the Director of the Breakthrough Energy Contrails team. The Contrails team works with leading academic groups, tech companies, and airlines to decrease the warming impact of aviation through contrail avoidance and mitigation tools. Marc brings a pragmatic approach to the effort to generate opportunities for verifiable mitigation in the near future.

Prior to Breakthrough Energy, Marc worked as an applied scientist and entrepreneur in a diverse set of R&D efforts across fluid mechanics, geospatial analytics, and mobile health-care. He is motivated to harness modern science, data, and technology to design creative solutions for intractable human and climate issues. In 2020, he started a company to develop geospatial data systems for climate mitigation and adaptation. Most recently, he transitioned to building the research effort that would eventually become the Breakthrough Contrails project.

Marc received an M.S. in Fluids and Thermal Sciences from Brown University and a B.E. in Engineering from Dartmouth College. He lives in New Hampshire in an 1890 mill house that he has rehabilitated over time.