Biography

Jonathan Ajo-Franklin is a Faculty Scientist in the Energy Geoscience Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). He received his BA in Computer Science and History at Rice University (1998) followed by an MS (2003) and PhD (2005) in Geophysics at Stanford University. His graduate work focused on high-resolution crosswell geophysics applied to environmental site characterization. From 2005 to 2007 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Earth Resources Laboratory at MIT. Since 2007, he has led a group at LBNL, first as a researcher (2007-2013) and since 2013 as a staff scientist. He leads the Environmental and Applied Geophysics Lab (EAGLe) and the Reservoir Processes group in the Center for Nanoscale Control of Geologic Carbon (NCGC).

Jonathan’s research focuses broadly on using geophysical techniques to understand dynamic alterations in subsurface properties of relevance to the environmental and energy sectors. His technological focus in the field is on novel acquisition approaches including semi-permanent seismic sources and fiber-optic distributed acoustic sensing (DAS). He is active in several research efforts applying timelapse borehole seismology to geologic carbon sequestration (GCS), geothermal energy production, and hydraulic fracturing. He also leads projects exploring the use of large fiber optic arrays and DAS for geotechnical monitoring (in permafrost environments) and hydrogeologic monitoring at the basin scale. At a smaller length scale, he has a research program examining the rock physics of GCS, thermo-mechanical fracturing, and permafrost processes at the pore to core scale using dynamic (4D) synchrotron micro-tomography.

Jonathan has been an active member of the American Geophysical Union since 1997 (Near Surface Section) and a member of the Society of Exploration Geophysics since 1996; he was a special (2009-2011) and then associate editor (2011-2016) for Geophysics and is currently a member of the SEG Council (District 3).