Jefferson Tester
Professor of Sustainable Energy Systems / Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Croll Energy Fellow and Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future Fellow

Dr. Tester is the Professor of Sustainable Energy Systems in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University and Cornell’s Principal Scientist for Earth Source Heat. He also founded and served as Director of the Cornell Energy Institute from 2009 -2017 and is a Fellow in the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future and a Croll Energy Fellow.  Prior to his appointment at Cornell in 2009, Dr. Tester was the H.P. Meissner Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and served as Director of MIT's Energy Laboratory for 12 years (1989-2001).

While at MIT, Professor Tester chaired an 18-member international panel that evaluated the long term geothermal potential of the US, resulting a major report in 2007– The Future of Geothermal Energy. Dr. Tester was the US representative for geothermal energy to the IPCC working group which evaluated the global potential of renewable energy.

In 2011 he received the Special Achievement Award, Geothermal Resources Council. He has published extensively in the energy field having co-authored over 280 research papers and 12 books, including two books on geothermal energy technology and a popular energy textbook --Sustainable Energy – Choosing Among Options.

Currently Dr.Tester is leading Cornell’s decarbonization efforts to use geothermal heat extracted from rocks at depths to 3+ km for supplying the campus district heating system.

Presentation (PDF)