Collaboration and Conversations: How Tulane Is Shaping the Future of Energy

Illustration and animation by Jack Hudson

On Tulane’s uptown campus this September, students donning suits brushed shoulders with executives from major energy companies, while founders of energy startups talked with law professors and policy makers outside the packed Kendall Cram lecture hall and companies demonstrated their technologies.

The mingling of different fields and people brought together by their interest in energy during the second annual Future of Energy Forum, felt “very authentic to Tulane,” said Tulane alum and founder and CEO of Pila Energy Cole Ashman.

Almost 2,000 people registered for the forum, doubling the interest from the first year of the event and fulfilling the vision of a conference that would bring together local residents, students and experts to have important conversations about energy in all its forms.

“There are no easy answers, and that’s exactly why we’re here,” said President Michael A. Fitts as he welcomed attendees to the second annual forum.

Fitts also announced Tulane’s next planned foray into the world of energy: the Institute for Advanced Energy Studies, which, like the forum, will bring together voices from all energy perspectives — across science, engineering, law, business and beyond.

“We see Tulane as a convener, bringing together top experts from across fields to tackle complex energy challenges,” said Kerry Stockwell, vice president of government and community relations at Tulane.

A pipe(line) dream

“Energy touches everybody in some shape or form,” said Daniel Shantz, associate dean for research and PhD programs and Entergy Chair in Clean Energy Engineering in the School of Science and Engineering. “People expect inexpensive and reliable energy – they expect the electricity is on in the morning.”

That reality is one of the driving forces behind the energy forum, and why Tulane plans to keep the event free and open to the public.

“Our energy future belongs to all of us, and that means that conversations about our energy future need to be open to all of us,” said Frédéric Sourgens, the James McCulloch Chair in Energy Law at the Law School.

The forum was conceived nearly a decade ago during conversations between David Meyer, dean of the Law School at the time; Law School alum Jim McCulloch; Treb Winegar, development director at the Law School; Law School alum Randall Ebner; and President Fitts.

At the time, no academic energy program or forum combined business, engineering, law and policy, according to Randall Ebner, former vice president and general counsel of Exxon Mobil Corporation.

The programs came first, with the creation of the Tulane Energy Institute at the A. B. Freeman School of Business and the Energy Law & Policy Center at the Law School. Academic programs, including the Master of Management in Energy program in the Freeman School, were also created.

Then in 2023, the Law School and the Freeman School brought together lawyers, policy experts, business professionals and Tulane faculty for the “Tulane Energy Forum.”

“I was manning registration, getting people coffee, making sure people knew where to go,” said Sourgens. “It was chaotic, but it proved the key point: we can have this conversation here.”

Later that year, the Freeman School’s Energy Institute hosted a Clean Energy Investment Symposium with Janney Montgomery Scott, an investment company. That event solidified to Conner and Sourgens that the energy forum of their dreams was possible.

“We learned that energy was a topic that had a large draw,” said Pierre Conner, executive director of the Energy Institute. “And we had the facilities on campus to hold an event like this.”

The group moved ahead with bigger plans.

The forum comes uptown

“We were in startup mode,” said Stockwell of planning the inaugural forum in 2024. “It felt very entrepreneurial.”

The organizers sought early investors, built community support and invited leaders from across the energy sector.

Thanks to the wide network of Tulane alumni and faculty who work in energy, and the people they know, Stockwell and her team were able to secure speaker commitments from CEOs, engineers, entrepreneurs and authors spanning the full spectrum of energy.

Jeff Cantin, president and founder of Solar Alternatives and president of the Gulf States Renewable Energy Industries Association, eagerly agreed to speak at both forums, as well as the precursor event in 2023.

“Sometimes, you go to these forums, and they’re trying to steer the discussion in a particular direction,” he said, “but this event is very open.”

Because the forum takes place in the Lavin-Bernick Center for University Life and the Goldring/Woldenberg Business Complex in the heart of the uptown campus, it is easy for students to attend, volunteer and meet the movers and shakers in the industry in which they want to work.

“The forum last year is how I fell in love with this school,” said Camren Monson, a student in the Master of Management in Energy program. He learned about the program while attending last year’s forum, and he returned this year as a volunteer.

In 2025, the theme of the forum was, “Powering the Future: Innovation, Competition and Collaboration,” and featured more than 30 sessions that approached energy from those three tracks.

In 2025, there was the addition of The Exchange in the Marshall Family Commons, which featured exhibits of research and breakthrough technologies from across industry and academia.

“We want community organizations, researchers and companies to see it as a sort of playground to network and showcase what they can do,” Stockwell said of the Exchange.

Power in collaboration

The Future of Energy Forum showcases Tulane’s strength in bringing together expertise from across disciplines. It connects leaders in law, business, science and engineering to address problems that no single field can solve alone.

This collaboration is especially critical as the region faces rising environmental challenges, from coastal land loss and extreme weather to the global need for more sustainable energy systems. These urgent issues highlight the importance of uniting expertise across science, policy and industry

“A forum that is interdisciplinary in nature, that crosses the boundaries of business and science and law and all aspects of society is a perfect fit for Tulane,” said Conner.

Tulane’s size is also an advantage. It gives the university both reach and flexibility. As the only R1 institution – a description for universities with the highest level of research activity – in the Gulf South and a member of the Association of American Universities, it has the resources of a major research university, but its smaller scale makes cross-campus collaboration more manageable. “We are big enough that there are significant resources at Tulane,” said Shantz, “but we’re also small enough that you can work across units efficiently.”

The forum also demonstrates how Tulane’s interdisciplinary approach extends beyond faculty. At this year’s event, former Exxon Mobil executive Randall Ebner and Alan Templeton, CEO of DCOR, LLC, shared perspectives on the rapidly evolving energy landscape during a joint panel.

“You know we really do interdisciplinary work when our alumni return and talk to each other, discussing their different ways of looking at the problem,” said Sourgens.

Examples of collaboration are visible across the university. MAGIC-SCAN, a project created under the bipartisan Cancer Moonshot initiative, brought together researchers in biomedical engineering, medicine and computer science to improve cancer care. Leaders say the same type of cross-pollination will drive innovation in energy as Tulane expands its role in shaping the field.

That collaborative model is now being built into the forthcoming Institute for Advanced Energy Studies. Like the forum, the institute will convene experts from every discipline, but with a permanent home to connect energy research, teaching and partnerships across campus.

One of the major aims of the institute is to connect individuals already working in the energy space with each other.

“We’d like to make it easier for people across campus to find folks working in energy,” said Shantz. “We really want to emphasize the cross-disciplinary nature of the work.”

Although research and grant-writing will be a large part of the work it will do, the institute will also provide classes and new degrees for students.

At the request of Fitts and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Robin Forman, Conner, Shantz and Sourgens are also fully engaged in planning for the new Institute for Advanced Energy Studies.

“There’s a lot we can do with current means,” said Sourgens. “We’re not waiting for anybody to get started.”

The new institute will join existing centers at Tulane, including the Energy Institute at Freeman and the Energy Law & Policy Center in the Law School.

“We will not reinvent anything we have here already,” said Conner.

“Tulane is preparing the next generation of leaders through cutting-edge research and education to address the world’s most pressing energy challenges,” said Fitts. “At the same time, we remain deeply connected to Louisiana and the Gulf South, where energy plays a central role. By drawing on local expertise, convening the brightest minds across disciplines and equipping students to drive innovation, the Institute for Advanced Energy Studies will transform regional insights into global solutions that benefit communities worldwide.”

What’s next?

Next year’s forum will take place Sept. 28-30, 2026. Conversations are already ongoing. “I’d like to see us stay current with the issues of the moment, which means that we’ll have to be nimble and thoughtful about the content and contributors,” said Conner.

Sourgens said they do that by talking to experts. “We have people as stakeholders who have decades upon decades of experience,” he said. “They know what has promise and what doesn’t.”

They also plan to continue to support student engagement, which has quickly become a large part of the draw of the forum.

“Something that surprised me was how quickly we were able to get this level of student engagement, between networking and volunteering,” Conner said.

Student interest in energy, and the forum in particular, is only ramping up, as evidenced by the existence of student groups like the Tulane Energy Club.

“Energy demand is rapidly increasing,” said Samantha Oblon, the undergraduate president of the club who is studying management, accounting and energy at Freeman. “This is a great space for students to learn from professionals on how we can solve these issues.”

Student participation is one of the great advantages of hosting the forum at a university like Tulane both for the companies that get to meet talented, passionate young people and for the students who get to glimpse their futures and make connections with leaders in their fields.

Forman said the university’s continued focus on energy is about shaping the future as much as responding to present needs.

“We are preparing students not just for today’s jobs but for the challenges they’ll face decades from now. By integrating research and education across disciplines, we’re equipping them to lead in an energy sector that is transforming the world,” he said.

“This is the Future of Energy Forum,” said Anjana Turner, an alum of both Tulane’s Newcomb-Tulane College and Law School who has been attending since that first event, “and our students here at Tulane are the future.”