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Colleagues and friends expressed shock and grief at Farrell’s death, noting that it came at a time when his career trajectory was climbing rapidly and his life’s work was finding an audience with policy makers.

“Alex Farrell was an extraordinarily influential scientist at the peak of his work,” said Mary Nichols, who knew Farrell from his work as a consultant for the California Air Resources Board. “It’s a terrible void he leaves behind.”

The circumstances surrounding Farrell’s death made it appear to be a suicide, according to Nichols, who did not have many details. The San Francisco Medical Examiner said an exact cause would not be known for several weeks.

An engineer by training, Farrell’s research focused on projects with practical and timely applications, included biofuels, hybrid electric vehicles, hydrogen-powered and transportation sustainability. He came to Berkeley in 2003 after teaching and doing research at Carnegie Mellon University. Since 2006, he had directed the campus’s Transportation Sustainability Research Center.

“He was one of the leading lights in the area of low-carbon fuels and energy systems, and his career was on a dramatic rise,” said colleague Dan Kammen, a professor in the Energy and Resources Group and of public policy who helped recruit Farrell to UC Berkeley and co-authored many papers with him, including a just-released report on plug-in hybrid vehicles.

State officials said Farrell’s research and advocacy had been pivotal in California’s effort to get cleaner-burning cars on its roads by setting targets for zero emission vehicles and requiring automakers to produce a fleet of plug-in hybrid vehicles, policies that have been adopted by 12 other states.

“Alex Farrell was one of California’s truly brilliant minds. He was instrumental in developing Governor Schwarzenegger’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard, a groundbreaking policy for our fight against global warming that is now being adopted by other states and countries. His passing is a huge loss both personally and professionally,” said David Crane, Schwarzenegger’s special advisor on jobs and the economy.

Last year, Farrell was invited to join the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels, an international panel working to develop standards for evaluating biofuels and their effect the environment.

Born in Miami on Jan. 1, 1962, Farrell grew up in New Jersey and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1984. He spent five years as a Naval engineer on nuclear submarines from and earned his Ph.D. in energy management and policy from the University of Pennsylvania in 1996. His postdoctoral training included fellowships with the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He worked at Carnegie Mellon, first as a research engineer and then as director of the university’s Electricity Industry Center, from 1998 until 2003.

His research on energy and environmental policy appeared in journals such as Science, Environmental Science & Technology, Environmental Research Letters and Energy Policy.