Theodore Caplow

Theodore "Ted" Caplow (born 1969) is an American social entrepreneur, environmental engineer, and inventor. He is a pioneer in the field of sustainable agriculture, having designed and developed both the Science Barge in Yonkers, NY and the Miami Science Barge, urban farming prototypes that address vegetable and fish production, respectively. Caplow has also patented a Vertically Integrated Greenhouse. As an academic, Caplow has published a series of peer-reviewed articles on water containment dynamics in the Hudson River Estuary. He has founded or co-founded five companies in the area of applied science and sustainable technology: NY Sun Works (2004), BrightFarms (2008), Fish Navy Films (2010), CappSci (2014), and Grayscale Partners (2017). Caplow created Grayscale with frequent collaborator Nathalie Manzano to pursue design consulting and development opportunities in sustainable real estate, ecological technology, and long-term risk management.

Ted Caplow was born Theodore Caplow, Jr. in New York City in 1969 to Anne Christine Allen and Theodore Caplow. His father, also known as Ted Caplow, is a well-known American sociologist and author of over 20 books in the social sciences.

Caplow grew up in central Virginia and attended boarding school in Massachusetts, where he was fascinated by the advent of the personal computer. He entered Harvard University intending to major in physics but graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology in 1992. Following college, Caplow, together with his father and other family members, sailed a 47 foot boat from New York City to Cyprus, further stimulating his interest in nature, science, and engineering.

He received an M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1998 from Princeton University, where his interest in renewable energy was fostered by Robert H. Socolow and Daniel Kammen and where he received a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. Caplow’s thesis at Princeton was an extended design modeling and optimization project for a solar thermal “power tower” that explored the feasibility of employing gas turbines in these designs. Caplow completed his Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering in 2004 at Columbia University, where he was influenced by Peter Schlosser, Vijay Modi, Klaus Lackner, and Upmanu Lall, among others. Caplow’s dissertation concerned the hydrodynamics of contaminant transport in the Hudson River Estuary and his scholarly work in this field has appeared in Environmental Science & Technology, the Journal of Environmental Engineering and Acta Horticulturae.

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