John Eichelberger Email & Phone Number

John Eichelberger’s career spans 50 years in national laboratories, USGS, University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), and as an independent consultant encompassing volcanology, geothermal energy, natural hazards, and international Arctic education. His academic preparation was a BS and MS at MIT and a PhD at Stanford, all in geology. He was a staff member in Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Energy Division from 1974 until 1979, when he joined the Geosciences Division at Sandia National Laboratories. Sandia recognized him as Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in 1989 and promoted him to Geochemistry Supervisor in 1990. In 1991, he moved to UAF to become Professor of Volcanology and develop the Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO). Sixteen years later he became Program Coordinator of the US Geological Survey’s (VA) Volcano Hazards Program, managing funding for the nation’s volcano observatories. He returned to Fairbanks in 2012 as Dean of the Graduate School, simultaneously serving as VP Academic UArctic. An enduring career theme has been international cooperation in natural hazards and education. He founded Japan-Kamchatka-Alaska Subduction Processes (JKASP) group, meeting biennially in Sapporo; Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky; and Fairbanks, and the International Volcanological Field School, offering field experience in Kamchatka and Alaska. In 2015, he was awarded the Sergey Soloviev Medal by the EGU for international natural hazards work. John is best known for mixing and degassing of magmas, for scientific drilling, and for advocacy of international collaboration, documented in some 100 publications. He is now Research Professor and Professor Emeritus at UAF, continuing research and international activities from his base in UAF's Alaska Center for Energy and Power. His primary goals now are to implement direct exploration of magma www.kmt.is and use of super-hot fluids associated with magma for electric power generation. A special issue he edited on magma-hydrothermal systems was published (free access, online) by Geosciences (MDPI) in 2020.Statement:"The biggest need in the CO2 crisis is green baseload power. Some argue for fission, but with the hazards of mining, accidents, and waste sequestration I fear this is a step backwards. I would argue that geothermal is the only truly green baseload source but we need to go superhot to achieve efficiency. All shallow superhot systems are closely associated with magma. We should consider the magma-hydrothermal regime as a single system in order to advance geothermal energy."

Listed skills include Volcanology, Igenous Petrology, Geothermal Energy, Natural Hazards, and 3 others.