Assistant Professor Shaina Kelly selected to receive a DOE Early Career Research Award

Shaina Kelly, Assistant Professor in Columbia's Earth and Environment Engineering Department, has been awarded the prestigious 2024 DOE Early Career Research Award. Kelly is among 91 early career scientists from across the country who will receive a combined $138 million in funding for ground-breaking research in STEM fields. 

Kelly's research proposal explores the impact of multiphase flow dynamics, specifically flow rate and partial water saturation states, on mineral nucleation and crystallization reactions in nano- and micro-porous geologic media. The early career funding supports her lab's multimodal investigation of emergent multiphase flow controls on carbon mineralization in basaltic and other mafic/ultramafic rocks, utilizing an integration of pore- to core-scale sample analysis techniques, microscopy, micro/nanofluidics, and computational fluid dynamics methods.

Kelly has a PhD in Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. In July 2022, she joined the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering at Columbia University as an Assistant Professor and currently runs the Kelly Lab. Leading a multidisciplinary research team, her lab investigates transport phenomena in complex/unconventional geologic and engineered porous media. They are particularly interested in the interplay between nano- and microscale fluid flow and fluid-mineral interactions in dual-porosity subsurface rocks for sustainable energy and environmental applications. Prior to her academic post, Kelly worked in industry at AquaNRG Consulting Inc. and ConocoPhillips Company.

The DOE Early Career Research Program was established in 2010 to support the nation’s young researchers and drive scientific innovation. Early Career Program awardees are critical to DOE’s long-standing efforts to develop the next generation of STEM leaders to solidify America’s role as the driver of science and innovation across the world.