As the Associate Lab Director for Earth & Environmental Sciences Area at Berkeley Laboratory, Dr. Susan Hubbard leads a premier group of ~500 staff that has a significant research portfolio in climate science, terrestrial ecosystem science, environmental and biological system science, fundamental geoscience, and subsurface energy resources. Research within this Area of Berkeley Lab is tackling some of the most pressing environmental and subsurface energy challenges of the 21st Century. Dr. Hubbard is also an Adjunct Professor at UC Berkeley in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management. Dr. Hubbard earned her PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley, and prior to joining Berkeley Lab, she was a geologist at the US Geological Survey and a geophysicist in industry.
As a Senior Scientist at Berkeley Laboratory, Dr. Hubbard’s research focuses on quantifying how terrestrial environments function, with a particular emphasis on the development of geophysical approaches to provide new insights about processes relevant to contaminant remediation, carbon cycling, water resources, and subsurface energy systems. She leads the DOE Watershed Function Scientific Focus Area project, is a co-PI of the Next Generation Ecosystem Experiment (NGEE-Arctic) and a co-lead for the national DOE Subsurface (‘SubTER’) crosscut initiative.
Dr. Hubbard has served widely on many scientific committees and boards, including the DOE Biological and Environmental Research Program Advisory Committee (BERAC) and the California Council on Science and Technology. She has served on the editorial boards of JGR-Biosciences, Water Resources Research, Vadose Zone Journal and Journal of Hydrology. She has been honored by the scientific community with several awards, including: the Frank Frischknecht Award for leadership and innovation in near-surface geophysics, the Birdsall Dreiss Distinguished Lecturer Award, Distinguished Alumni of UC Berkeley, as a Geological Society of America (GSA) Fellow, and the 2016 Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) Harold Mooney Award for Near Surface Geophysics.
