Dr. Tester is a professor of sustainable energy systems in the Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University. He also serves as principal scientist for Cornell’s Earth Source Heat project. Dr. Tester is a Croll Energy Fellow and a Fellow in the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future. 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 where he served as Director of MIT's Energy Laboratory (1989-2001) and Director of MIT's School of Chemical Engineering Practice (1980-1989). His research on geothermal and biomass energy extraction and conversion and environmental control technologies has resulted in over 300 scientific publications and 13 co-authored books. Dr. Tester is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and was a member of the IPCC's Working Group on Renewable Energy Sources, and advisory boards of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the American Council of Renewable Energy, and Idaho National Laboratory.
Energy/Resource Related Problems – Thermal-hydraulic processes for geothermal energy extraction in subsurface rock reservoirs - Geothermal reservoir engineering (tracer transport and rock–water interactions in fractured geothermal reservoirs) - Geothermal heat pumps for integrated cooling and heating applications - Deep drilling in hard rock using chemical-assisted hydrothermal jets - Recovery of critical energy materials using supercritical fluid extraction - Thermochemical liquefaction and gasification processing of waste biomass feedstocks – Integrated energy systems analysis of renewable biomass and geothermal including life cycle and technoeconomic assessment
Applied Thermodynamics and Kinetics – Chemical kinetics and phase equilibria in hydrothermal and supercritical media - Molecular simulations of condensed matter – Thermodynamic and transport properties of aqueous organic and electrolyte mixtures for thermal energy recovery and storage and power cycle applications.
Energy systems analysis methods, renewable energy and fossil energy technologies, emphasis on applying quantitative methods using thermodynamic, kinetic and transport fundamentals in the context of scalable practical energy processes operating under environmental and economic constraints. Focused emphasis on geothermal, solar, bioenergy and energy storage technologies that highlight collaborative research with several groups in engineering and agriculture at Cornell.
B.S. (Chemical Engineering), Cornell University, 1966
M.S. (Chemical Engineering), Cornell University, 1967
Ph.D. (Chemical Engineering), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1971
Cornell is one step closer to determining the feasibility of using deep geothermal energy to heat the Ithaca campus now that drilling has commenced for the Cornell University Borehole Observatory. Read more about 2-mile borehole to reveal viability of campus’s geothermal future
One of the grant’s sustainability components also involves a collaboration between Cornell researchers Jefferson Tester, the David Croll Sesquicentennial Fellow and Professor in the Smith School of... Read more about Cornell partners in $10M poultry science grant
One of the 10 projects supported with this funding is titled, "Expanding AnyTown USA Wastewater Treatment Facilities Into Local Microgrid Hubs" and includes CBE professors Jeff Tester and Fengqi You... Read more about Atkinson Academic Venture Fund awards $1.3M to 10 projects
