Simone Philpot

Dr. Simone Philpot is a Fellow on the Scale-up and Acceleration program team at the Cascade Institute (Royal Roads University, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada) where she investigates pathways to accelerate energy transitions. Drawing on a range of systems methods, Simone examines challenges ranging from the interconnections between energy transitions on land and maritime shipping, and how values and worldviews could impact the future of geothermal energy systems.  

Simone holds a PhD in Geography and Environmental Management, with specialization in Water Management from the University of Waterloo, where she developed a novel approach to collecting values-informed public input related to consequential environmental issues. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Systems Design Engineering, University of Waterloo, Simone then worked to shed light on development conflicts in Canada, generating insights about decision processes and power dynamics in Ontario’s aggregate mining sector. Her research addressing a proposed mine expansion atop the world’s cleanest known naturally occurring water won the Springer Best Paper Award at the 2022 Group Decision and Negotiation Conference. As a Post doctoral Fellow at the University of British Columbia, Simone then led a collaborative project developing decision support for evaluating alternative pathways to reducing the multi-dimensional environmental impacts of marine transportation.  

Simone’s research interests and publications span a range of topics, including trans-jurisdictional groundwater conflicts, aggregate mining, maritime shipping, policy assessment and conflict resolution.  Simone has taught at the University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada), in both the Engineering and Environment Faculties as well as the University’s Collaborative Water Program. At UBC, she also taught Energy Policy in the Masters of Engineering Leadership Program. Simone is a certified StrategyFinder consultant and studies yoga in her free time.