Biography

Don DePaolo received his Ph.D. in Geology from Caltech in 1978, and has been a professor of geochemistry and geology at UCLA (1978-1988) and UC Berkeley (1988-2016).  He is currently Graduate Professor of Geochemistry and Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley. He served as Chair of the Department of Geology and Geophysics at UC Berkeley from 1990-1993, and was Director of the LBNL Earth Sciences Division from 2007-2012.  From 2010-2016 he was Associate Laboratory Director for Energy Sciences at LBNL. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has served on numerous advisory and study committees for federal agencies, universities, and the National Research Council. His research involves the use of isotopic measurements as tracers and chronometers of Earth processes.  From 2009 through 2018 he was the director of the Center for Nanoscale Controls of Geologic CO₂, a US DOE Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) led by LBNL.