Working in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Alison managed renewable technology programs to address barriers to the deployment of renewable energy. Alison was responsible for developing and building buy-in for the marine renewables program strategy, principally a strategy to advance a marine renewable technology plagued with high cost and long development timelines. The strategy identified opportunities for technology advancement which I matched to a suite of incentives (e.g. grants, prizes) and threshold goals to drive innovation.

Alison displayed a willingness and ability to chart new waters through her application of novel mechanisms to accelerate innovation in the marine energy technology sector. Specifically, her team completed DOE’s first online code competition when she developed a partnership with NASA and the national labs. DOE’s Sunshot program then launched their own coding competition following Alison’s lead. Alison then gathered the buy-in of political appointees including the Secretary of Energy, and navigated legal, contractual, and knowledge barriers to conduct DOE’s Wave Energy Prize, a high-profile design-build-test competition.

Alison’s team set a prize goal to double the energy capture per device unit cost in 18 months. Not only did four competitors exceed this goal, but the top competitor quintupled energy capture. Alison was recognized by the industry with a 2016 Women with Hydropower Vision award for the “tremendous influence and impact [Alison] had on the larger hydropower industry.” DOE’s Wave Energy Prize was also one of four energy exhibits at the 2016 White House Frontiers Conference, recognized as exemplary among “DOE programs [that] continue to invest in the basic and applied research essential to solving the 21st century grand challenges of clean energy (obamawhitehouse.archives.gov).” New companies born through the wave energy prize are now receiving investment for open ocean testing and driving greater competition for all technology developers in the sector.