Susan Hubbard

Susan Hubbard

As Associate Lab Director of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Berkeley Laboratory, Susan leads a premier group that has a significant research portfolio in climate science, terrestrial ecosystem science, environmental and biological system science, fundamental geoscience, and subsurface energy resources (including carbon sequestration, geothermal, nuclear and fossil energy). The extraordinary breadth of expertise within the Earth Sciences Division of Berkeley Lab allows exploration of fundamental through applied aspects of some of the most pressing environmental and subsurface energy challenges of the 21st Century. As an advisor to the Department of Energy Biological and Environmental Research Program as well as several other organizations, Susan has contributed significantly to shaping the direction of environmental, biological and subsurface energy in the US and abroad.

Susan earned her PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley, an MS in Geophysics at Virginia Tech, and a BS in Geological Sciences at UC Santa Barbara. Prior to joining Berkeley Lab, she was a geologist at the US Geological Survey and a geophysicist in industry. Her research focuses on quantifying how terrestrial environments function, with a particular emphasis on the development and use of geophysical approaches to provide new insights about processes relevant to contaminant remediation, carbon cycling, water resources, and subsurface energy systems. She has published over 100 papers on this topic and leads several large, multi-disciplinary team projects.

She serves widely on many scientific committees and boards. She is the Associate Director for the Berkeley Water Center and an Associate Editor for JGR-Biogeosciences. She is the recipient of the Frank Frischknecht Award for leadership and innovation in near-surface geophysics and was a Geological Society of America Birdsall Dreiss Distinguished Lecturer. Susan has been honored as a Distinguished Alumni of UC Berkeley and as a Geological Society of America Fellow. (For more information, please click here.)