Staff Scientist
Email: nnakata ‘at’ lbl ‘dot’ gov
Nori Nakata is a Staff Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he investigates subsurface fault behavior and structural changes driven by natural processes and engineered activities such as geothermal energy production, critical mineral extraction, and subsurface energy storage. His research focuses on understanding subsurface dynamics and the mechanisms of induced seismicity through field data acquisition, signal processing, artificial intelligence, and numerical modeling. He leads the development of AI-aided frameworks for geophysical imaging, forward and inverse modeling, and digital twins that integrate physics-based and data-driven approaches. Before joining Berkeley Lab, he earned a Ph.D. from the Colorado School of Mines in 2013, completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University, served as a faculty member at the University of Oklahoma, and became a Principal Research Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.