John F. Raffensperger, Ph.D., is an operations researcher. He helps people who manage complicated systems but struggle with complicated problems. He holds a Ph.D. and MBA from the University of Chicago and a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Northwestern University.
For four decades he has applied optimization to complex business and public-sector decisions. His consulting and research portfolios span scheduling, supply chains, emergency response, and environmental markets.
In industry settings, he has delivered solutions for scheduling, inventory management, facility location planning, water resource optimization, and process improvement.
He has led research on environmental market design, including mechanisms for water markets, nutrient-credit trading and integrated water-electricity markets. He served as Principal of the Water Markets Research Group at the University of Canterbury and supervised doctoral research on markets for groundwater, and water nutrients, and impervious cover.
As Senior Operations Researcher at RAND, Raffensperger worked on national security, emergency preparedness, infrastructure recovery, and climate policy, including Puerto Rico recovery planning and military logistics. As Visiting Professor of Operations Management at the University of Rochester’s Simon Business School, he received the 2025 MS Business Analytics Superior Teaching Award.
In the past ten years, he has studied global warming and climate policy. His published work proposes innovative market-based systems to price emissions and carbon removal while targeting temperature outcomes.