Eva Schill, an accomplished geologist and geophysicist, has joined the Energy Geosciences Division in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area at Berkeley Lab as the Geothermal Systems Science Program Lead. Her appointment follows an extensive international search process. 

“We are thrilled to welcome Eva Schill to lead the laboratory’s Geothermal Systems Program,” said Peter Nico, interim director for the Energy Geosciences Division. “She has established herself as one of the foremost experts in geothermal energy exploration worldwide as both a professor and researcher, and through program development and scientific leadership activities. This expertise and experience will be instrumental in further advancing our geothermal research program here at Berkeley Lab.”

EGD scientists work to understand the behavior of fluids in rock deep underground and have applied this knowledge to developing geologic carbon storage and hydrogen recovery systems, in addition to geothermal technologies. EGD’s Geothermal Systems Program is focused on developing innovative technologies that can identify and characterize conventional and hidden natural hydrothermal systems; and characterizing, developing, and sustaining enhanced geothermal systems through innovative modeling, microearthquake (MEQ) monitoring, and laboratory and in-situ experiments.

EGD’s geothermal experts are involved in three projects that were selected earlier this year by DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Office (GTO) to demonstrate how EGS can provide cost-effective and reliable carbon-free power in three different settings, one in northern California and two others – in Utah and Oregon. Previously EGD led the GTO’s Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) Collab Project, a six-year, multi-lab effort to test and verify computational models that could be used in EGS. 

Schill, who earned a Ph.D. in geophysics from Institute of Geosciences Eberhard Karls University Tübingen in her native Germany, has worked in a variety of roles in academic, research lab, and industry settings over 24 years as a researcher. She most recently served as Division Head of the GeoEnergy group at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), a German research institution that as part of the Helmholtz Association is similar to a DOE national lab with about 9,900 employees and a $1.1 billion Euro budget. Until recently Schill also held a position as Professor for Geophysics in Reservoir Systems in the Institute of Applied Geosciences at the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany, and was co-editor-in-chief of Geothermics, an Elsevier journal, from 2014-2021. 

At KIT, Schill was intensively involved in the scientific and strategic evaluation of KIT’s Strategic Energy Research Proposal, in which she played a key role in twice achieving the highest rating for geothermal research among all Helmholtz Association national labs. In 2019, she became the project lead of the DeepStor research infrastructure, a large-scale demonstration field experiment for thermal energy storage in the deep underground at temperatures up to 140 °C. More recently, Eva successfully spearheaded KIT’s €50 M (Euro) GeoLaB application, the world’s first underground research laboratory for EGS with realistic flow rates.

Schill has published widely and impactfully, with contributions that have significantly advanced many aspects of geothermal energy exploration such as monitoring of geothermal processes during reservoir engineering, improving process understanding in enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), and technological developments in the field of high temperature thermal storage.

The Geothermal System Science Program Lead role is charged with developing and maintaining an independently funded research portfolio in an area aligned with geothermal energy technologies and other research areas having to do with Earth’s deep underground. This position also leads the Geothermal Program in the Energy Geosciences Division.