It is with great sorrow that we announce the unexpected passing of Valeri Korneev on the morning of December 22, 2015.
Valeri has been an integral member of our Earth Sciences family since 1990, soon after he arrived in the Berkeley area from Russia. Valeri was a Staff Scientist geophysicist, who focused on seismic wave propagation and inversion, with particular emphasis on scattering, attenuation and waveguide theory and testing of those theories using field experiments. He was an out-of-the-box thinker who could always be counted on to offer a creative new approach for tackling a difficult wave propagation challenge. Valeri was extremely kind and easy going, always happy talking about geophysics and interacting with colleagues. Four days before his passing, Valeri presented a study on ‘Frequency-Dependent Seismic Waves in Fluid-Saturated Fractured Rock’ at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
Valeri is survived by his two sons and wife, Marina. Valeri was cremated and returned to his family on Christmas Eve. No funeral service is planned, but instead a celebration of his life and many scientific achievements will be held in early March.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family. He will be greatly missed.

Valeri Korneev (LBNL) stands next to the magneto-acoustic sensor (MAS) as it is ready for deployment in the SAFOD pilot hole down to 1 km depth. Photo by Stas Bystrichenko.
This post was updated on 2-22-2016