Distinguished Scientist Seminar Series, 2008-2009

Welcome to the newly established Earth Sciences Division's Distinguished Scientist Seminar Series. ESD hosts it's first year (2008) of seminars outlined below at LBNL. The ESD Distinguished Scientist Series is a monthly seminar featuring eminent individuals from various disciplines in the scientific community whose research is outstanding, interdisciplinary, and of broad interest to strategic interest initiatives in the earth sciences. Speakers normally spend a full day with researchers at Earth Sciences Division, LBNL, and the University of California, Berkeley.

Download the most recent ESD Distinguished Scientist Seminar Series brochure here.

2008-2009 Series

• Dr. Rod Ewing - 10:30 am to 12 pm, June 12, 2009; Building 66 Auditorium (pdf)
  Department of Geological Sciences, University of Michigan
  Pyrochlore: The Elegant Response of a Simple Structure to Extreme Conditions of Irradiation and Pressure
  Dr. Rod Ewing is the Donald R. Peacor Collegiate Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Michigan. He has faculty appointments in the Departments of Nuclear Engineering &Radiological Sciences and Materials Science & Engineering, and is an Emeritus Regents' Professor at the University of New Mexico, where he was a member of the faculty from 1974 to 1997. Ewing is the author or co-author of over 600 research publications and the editor or coeditor of 14 monographs, proceedings volumes or special issues of journals. He has been granted a patent for the development of a highly durable material for the immobilization of excess weapons plutonium. He is a founding Editor of the magazine, Elements. He has received the Hawley Medal of the Mineralogical Association of Canada in 1997 and 2002, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002, the Dana Medal of the Mineralogical Society of Americain 2006 and the Lomonosov Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2006 and a Honorary Doctorate from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in 2007.

Past Speakers

• Dr. Laurent Charlet - 10:30 am to 12 pm, April 24, 2009; Building 66 Auditorium (pdf)
  Earth and Planetary Science Department (LGIT-OSUG), Universite Joseph Fourier Grenoble I in France
  Field-Scale to Molecular-Scale Modeling of Arsenic in Bengal Groundwater
  Laurent Charlet is a Distinguished Professor, Universite Joseph Fourier Grenoble I in France, and an expert in contaminant
  geochemistry, particularly with respect to arsenic and selenium. Author of more than 120 publications, his research encompasses both molecular-scale modeling and field-scale descriptions of hydrogeology and contaminant availability. He has established research and education programs in Laos and Cambodia. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Hydrology, and manager of several French and EU research initiatives. In 2007, Laurent received the CNRS Silver Medal, one of France’s highest research honors.
• Jerald L. Schnoor - 10:30 am to 12 pm, March 6, 2009; Building 66 Auditorium (pdf)
  Civil and Environmental Engineering, The University of Iowa
  Responding to Climate Change: Biofuels, Energy Security, and Management Options
  Professor Jerry Schnoor is the Allen S. Henry Chair in Engineering and the Co-Director of the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research at the University of Iowa. Jerry is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (elected in 1999) for his research using mathematical models in science policy decisions. He chaired the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ORD Board of Scientific Counselors, 2000-2004, and is a member of EPA’s Science Advisory Board and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Advisory Environmental Health Sciences (NAEHS) Council. Schnoor is considered one of the founding fathers of phytoremediation, using plants to help clean the environment. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of the leading international environmental journal, Environmental Science and Technology, and his other research interests include water quality modeling, environmental observatories, sustainability, and global change.
• Martin Polz - 10:30 am to 12 pm, February 6, 2009; Building 66 Auditorium (pdf)
  Microbial Diversity in the Wild: Genomes, Populations, and Species
  Martin F. Polz is an Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He is an environmental microbiologist and received his Masters and Ph.D. from Harvard University where he also conducted his postdoctoral research. His research group at MIT studies the dynamics that govern microbes’ interactions and evolution to understand the role of individual populations within the community, the range of genomic similarity that defines a functional unit, and what mechanisms govern diversification of microbial populations in the environment. His research group addresses these questions using a combination of quantitative molecular approaches, genomics, physiology and modeling. He is an editor of Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews and among his many honors and awards are the Anna Vaughn Foundation Fellowship, the Gilbert Winslow Career Development Chair and the Doherty Professorship in Ocean Utilization.

• Alfred Spormann - 10:30 am to 12 pm, January 9, 2009; Building 66 Auditorium (pdf)
  Genome Biology of Dehalococcoides
  Alfred M. Spormann is a Professor at Stanford University in the Departments of Chemical Engineering, Civil & Environmental Engineering, and (by courtesy) Biological Sciences and Geological & Environmental Sciences. He is a microbial physiologist and biochemist who received his Ph.D. from the Philipps-University, (Marburg, Germany) and conducted postdoctoral research in the Departments of Biochemistry at the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis) and Stanford University. Among his honors and awards are the Otto Moensted Visiting Professorship (2003; Danish Technical University, Lyngby, DK), the Charles Lee Powell Foundation Research Award (2000-2002), an NSF CAREER award (1998), and a Terman Fellowship Award (1995; Stanford University). He is an editor of Applied and Environmental Microbiology and Archives of Microbiology and has served on several editorial boards and committees (including Annual Review of Microbiology). Currently, he is the director of the Hopkins Microbiology Course (Pacific Grove, CA), and was director of the Stanford Biofilm Research Center and co-director of the Microbial Diversity Course at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA.

• Kevin Rosso - 10:30 am to 12 pm, November 7, 2008; Building 50 Auditorium (pdf)
  Electron Transfer Dynamics in Biogeochemical Cycling of Iron
  Kevin Rosso is a Staff Scientist and an Associate Director in the Chemical and Materials Sciences Division at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and in the Environmental Dynamics and Simulation Directorate, Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory at PNNL. Dr. Rosso’s research is centered on elucidating the relationships between the atomic and electronic structure of crystalline materials with their reactivity and physical properties, particularly at interfaces, using various concepts and tools of surface science, chemistry, solid state physics, and crystal chemistry. His recent research is focused on unraveling rates and mechanisms of biogeochemical electron transfer towards a better understanding of subsurface contaminant transport. Dr. Rosso has published 80 peer-reviewed publications and several book chapters on various molecular-scale aspects of mineral/water and mineral/microbe interface chemistry.

• Eldad Haber - 10:30 am - 12 pm, October 3, 2008; Building 50, Auditorium (pdf)
  Numerical Methods for Large-Scale Experimental Design
  Eldad Haber is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Emory University. He received his Ph.D in Geophysics and Applied Mathematics from the University of British Columbia (1997), working with Doug Oldenburg, followed by postdoctoral research in Computer Science with Uri Ascher. Since 2002, he has been on the faculty at Emory. His current research focuses on the field of scientific computing, with projects investigating computational inverse theory, computational electromagnetics, and medical image registration.

• Dennis Baldocchi - 1:00-2:30 p.m., Friday, September 5, 2008; Building 90, Room 3075 (pdf)
  Using Biophysical Models and Eddy Covariance Measuremetns to Ask (and Answer) Questions About Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions
  Dennis Baldocchi is a Professor of Biometeorology in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at Cal. His research focuses on measuring and modeling trace gas exchanges between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere. His current research projects, include flux measurements and modeling studies (CO₂, H₂O) over an oak savanna and grassland and over a peatland pasture (CH₄, CO₂, H₂O). He is also coordinating an international network of long-term flux sites (FLUXNET).