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Jens Birkholzer

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Dr. Jens Birkholzer is a Senior Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL, Berkeley Lab) and currently serves as Senior Advisor to the Energy Geosciences Division (EGD) in the Earth and Environmental Systems Area (EESA). He led EGD as its inaugural Scientific Division Director between 2015 and 2024, with a brief pause in 2022 when he was asked to serve as Interim Associate Lab Director for EESA. Dr. Birkholzer is a world-renowned expert on evaluating the feasibility and environmental sustainability of a broad portfolio of geo-energy applications, with particular focus on the role of deep subsurface formations for radioactive waste disposal and geologic carbon sequestration. Using a combination of numerical, theoretical, observational and experimental approaches, he focuses on the complex couplings between thermal-hydrological-mechanical and chemical processes activated by subsurface energy manipulations. He strives to improve mechanistic process understanding via a combination of in situ testing and advanced physics-based modeling, while using the knowledge gained to improve subsurface energy strategies at scale and address issues of societal relevance.

Dr. Birkholzer received his Ph.D. in water resources, hydrology, and soil science from Aachen University of Technology in Germany in 1994. He joined LBNL in 1994, left for a management position in his native Germany in 1999, and eventually returned to LBNL in 2001. He has over 400 scientific publications, about 170 of which are in peer-reviewed journals, in addition to numerous research reports. He serves on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control (IJGGC), the Energies Journal (Geo-Energy Section), the Journal of GeoEnergy Communications, and the Net Zero Journal, and is also an Editorial Policy Advisor for the Journal of Geomechanics for Energy and the Environment (GETE). Dr. Birkholzer leads the international DECOVALEX Model Comparison Initiative as its Chair, is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, and a Senior Fellow of the California Council on Science and Technology.


Area of Interest
  • Collaborative projects
  • Media enquiries
  • Join a web conference as a panellist or speaker
  • Industry Projects
  • Membership of an advisory committee
  • Geomechanics and Resources Geotechnical Engineering
  • Geophysical Fluid Dynamics
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Geochemistry
  • Hydrogeology
  • Computational Heat Transfer
Education
  • Ph.D. Water Resources,|Aachen University of Technology, Aachen, Germany|1994
  • M.Sc. Civil Engineering (Diplom)|Aachen University of Technology, Aachen, Germany|1988
  • B.Sc. Civil Engineering (Vor-Diplom)|Aachen University of Technology, Aachen, Germany|1985

Recent Publications