My first real exposure to geology came while serving as a high school volunteer for the Student Conservation Association at Zion National Park. After spending two summers working as a field assistant in northern New Mexico for a geology professor at Williams College, I decided to change my major to geology. I headed west to graduate school at Stanford University, where I did field mapping and laboratory investigations of the Los Azufres Geothermal Field in Mexico and a detailed petrologic study of boninite series volcanic rocks from their type locality in the Bonin Islands of Japan.
I spent three years as a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech, where I was introduced into the world of experimental petrology. After a brief stint as a postdoc at UC Santa Barbara, I then moved to Unocal’s Hartley Research Center, where I ran the stable isotope laboratory. I then transferred to Unocal’s Geothermal Division, where I was involved in the exploration of geothermal systems in Indonesia, Central America, and South America.
I joined the former Earth Sciences Division of LBNL in 2000, and have been involved in a variety of geologic and geochemical research projects. I led LBNL’s efforts in the study of the Peña Blanca uranium deposits, a natural analogue for flow and transport processes at Yucca Mountain. From 2007 to 2009, I served as a detailee for the Geosciences Research Program of DOE’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences. I became the lead for LBNL’s Geothermal Systems Program in 2016.
I retired from the Lab in 2023, but have returned as a rehired retiree.
Area of Interest
- Geology
- Geophysics
- Resources Engineering and Extractive Metallurgy
- Geochemistry
- Civil Engineering
Education
- PhD|Stanford University, Stanford, United States|1985
- MS|Stanford University, Stanford, United States|1983
- BA|Williams College, Williamstown, United States|1980
