Experts in environmental system processes and feedbacks—including wildfire, subsurface and radionuclide geochemistry and transport—we combine basic and applied research to capture environmental processes and develop novel and integrated high-performance computation. We also provide comprehensive evaluations, critical information and technology maturation for government and industry. We facilitate fire management, renewable energy, carbon sequestration, sustainable unconventional fossil resource extraction, subsurface environment remediation and management, secure underground nuclear waste storage, surface and subsurface hydrology and geothermal energy.
Our Science
Atmospheric Modeling
- Researching microscale, mesoscale and global scale atmospheric phenomena
- Applying our acclaimed software to wildland and urban fire propagation
- Fast-running decision support tools (fire, atmosphere, gases/particulates transport)
- Computation to develop stronger, more efficient energy materials (e.g., wind turbines)
- Simulating electromagnetic pulse (EMP) signatures to characterize lightning and security threats
- Wind turbine array research, atmosphere feedbacks
Subsurface Flow and Transport Processes
- Energy transition-carbon capture, storage, mineralization, hydrogen
- Researching chemical interactions with time, the environment and movement through soil, rock and water/fluids
- Developing and applying models to predict flow and transport of multi-phase fluids in subsurface porous and fractured media
- Improving geothermal and oil/gas extraction
- Infrastructure-pipeline modeling, optimization, (orphan) oil and gas well detection and remediation
- Environmental project management, remediation and restoration
- Radionuclide geochemistry, mineral physics and engineering
- Underground hydrogen storage
- Decarbonization and carbon sequestration
Nuclear Nonproliferation and Global Security
- Characterizing gas migration from subsurface nuclear explosions through the subsurface and atmosphere
- Global security monitoring (e.g., undergound nuclear explosions)
- Designing and testing nuclear waste repositories
- Material characterization in support of weapons and reactors
Primary Expertise
- Studying chemical and physical interactions to improve extraction efficiency, reduce water usage and reduce greenhouse gas emission
- Developing process models, infrastructure optimization models and risk/performance assessment tools
Combining our world-class parallel computers, advanced numerical methods and code suites to enable detailed simulation of atmospheric dynamics and coupled atmospheric-wildfire interactions
- Developing advanced computational methods to model flow and transport in porous and fractured geologic media and coupled thermal-hydrologic-chemical-mechanical processes
- Applying strong Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) and Parameter Estimation (PE) capabilities
- Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and quantum computing. Apply supercomputers
- Geologic characterization and numerical mesh generation support subsurface flow projects
- EMP simulation supports critical weapons phenomenology programs.
- Machine learning
- Quantum computing to support subsurface research
Current and Emerging Strategic Thrusts
- Clean energy including fossil and wind
- Climate-impact realization
- Environmental management
- Microscale, mesoscale and global-scale atmospheric phenomenology
- Nuclear explosion-induced atmospheric physics
- Repository science for nuclear-waste disposal
- Subsurface flow and transport in porous and fractured media
- Wildfire and urban firestorm modeling and predictions
