Motivated by the needs for developing sustainable solutions to the Nation’s environmental and energy challenges, our group conducts fundamental and applied research spanning molecular to field scales in the following areas:

Environment & Water Resources 

• Hydrobiogeochemical impacts on carbon cycle from soil surface to groundwater
• Contaminant biogeochemistry and plume remediation

Subsurface Energy Recovery

• High pressure/temperature interfacial, colloidal, and capillary processes in geologic materials
• Fundamental and applied aspects of water-control on oil and gas recovery from tight rocks

Current Projects

• 

  Tracking water, nutrients, and carbon: soil to groundwaer (DOE/BER)

• Interfacial and capillary properties: effects on geological carbon sequestration (DOE/EFRC)
• Water controls on shale gas/oil mobilization (DOE/NETL)
• Developing water-free/water-less fluids for energy recovery (LBNL/LDRD)
• Ion diffusion in adsorbed water films (DOE/BES)