Carl I. Steefel

Carl Steefel is an American geoscientist. He is a senior scientist in the Energy Geosciences Division at Berkeley Laboratory.

Steefel is a Fellow of American Geophysical Union.

Education and early career Steefel earned a Bachelor of Arts in English literature from Washington University in St. Louis in 1974. In 1976, he worked as a Manuscripts librarian at the Huntington Library, and in 1978, he held the position of Geological Assistant at the United States Geological Survey's Branch of Exploration Research. Between 1979 and 1985, he worked as a Geologist at Anaconda Minerals while earning his Master of science in Geology from the University of Colorado Boulder in 1982. In 1985, he assumed Teaching and Research Fellowships at the Yale University Department of Geology and Geophysics, which he held until 1991. Subsequently, he was appointed as a Post-Doctoral Associate at the Mineralogisch-Petrographisches Institut, Universität Bern, where he worked until 1993. During this time, he also earned an M.Phil. in Geology in 1987 and a Doctor of Philosophy in Geochemistry in 1991, both from Yale University. which received an R&D 100 Award.

Research Steefel's research has focused on reactive transport modeling, high-performance computing, machine learning, kinetic treatments of water-rock interaction, and geochemistry; In 1990, alongside Philippe Van Cappellen, he documented how the kinetic modeling approach provided the understanding of water-rock interaction by incorporating nucleation, precursors, and Ostwald ripening. Later, in a study, he developed a coupled multi-dimensional model for multi-species transport and kinetic precipitation-dissolution reactions in single-phase hydrothermal systems. With Kate Maher, he applied reactive transport modeling in 2009 to address the reconciliation of laboratory and field rates of chemical weathering.

In 1996, Steefel co-edited and authored a chapter in a Reviews in Mineralogy volume on "Reactive Transport in Porous Media" with Peter Lichtner and Eric Oelkers. and worked as Lead Editor and author for a second Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry volume on "Pore-Scale Geochemical Processes" in 2015.

In 2012, Steefel co-authored with Sergi Molins and David Trebotich a study of pore-scale reaction rates using the high-performance computing code Chombo-Crunch.

In 2019, Steefel co-authored with Christophe Tournassat a study of ion transport in clay and clay-rocks with consideration of electrostatic effects. A second follow-on study considered ion migration in fractured clay-rich media.

In 2022 he co-authored with Mengsu Hu a study of carbon trapping in mafic rocks under partially saturated flow conditions. In 2021, Steefel co-authored with Mengsu Hu a study of chemo-mechanical pressure solution processes in salt rock contributing to salt creep.

Awards and honors 2019 – Fellow, American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2020 – Director's Award for Exceptional Achievement, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Selected articles