Education and early career
Steefel earned a B.A. 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 M.S. in Geology from the University of Colorado 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 Ph.D. in Geochemistry in 1991, both from Yale University. [1]
Later career
From 1993 to 1995, Steefel worked as a Research Scientist in the Interfacial Geochemistry Group at Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratories, where he was later designated as a Senior Research Scientist in 1995. He was also employed as an assistant professor of Geology at the University of South Florida between 1995 and 1998. Subsequently, he was appointed as a staff scientist in the Environmental Science Division at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In 2004, he left Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and joined Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a staff scientist in 2004, becoming a senior scientist in 2012. In 2016, he was appointed department head for Geochemistry in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area. [4] [1]
Steefel is the Principal Developer of the CrunchFlow Reactive Transport software, [5] which received an R&D 100 Award. [6]
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. [7] 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. [8] With Kate Maher, he applied reactive transport modeling in 2009 to address the reconciliation of laboratory and field rates of chemical weathering. [9]
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. [10] and worked as Lead Editor and author for a second Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry volume on "Pore-Scale Geochemical Processes" in 2015. [11]
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. [12]
In 2019, Steefel co-authored with Christophe Tournassat a study of ion transport in clay and clay-rocks with consideration of electrostatic effects. [13] A second follow-on study considered ion migration in fractured clay-rich media. [14]
In 2022 he co-authored with Mengsu Hu a study of carbon trapping in mafic rocks under partially saturated flow conditions. [15] In 2021, Steefel co-authored with Mengsu Hu a study of chemo-mechanical pressure solution processes in salt rock contributing to salt creep. [16]
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