Faculty Leader & Educational Resources

Lynn Orr, '69

Lynn Orr, ’69, has worked on energy research for his entire career.  He and his students study how complicated fluid mixtures move around in the porous rocks of Earth’s crust.  He also led university-wide energy research efforts through the Global Climate and Energy Project and the Precourt Institute for Energy. That work turned out to be good training for a two-year assignment as Under Secretary for Science and Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy, the largest supporter of the physical sciences and applied energy research for the country, from which he then returned to Stanford for teaching and research.

Lynn’s prior service as Dean of the School of Earth Sciences convinced him that Travel/Study trips provide the best classroom ever—the Earth itself—to illustrate the grand themes of Earth Sciences. Northern lights in Finland will illustrate in a beautiful way the constant flow of energy streaming from the sun and provide us with an opportunity to contemplate the exquisite balance of the capture of incoming sunlight with reflection by ice and snow to determine Earth’s climate.  The natural systems that evolved and support life on Earth are intimately tied to that  balance and the human activities affect them.  He will discuss the coevolution of life and climate, the deep geologic history of climate, more recent impacts of climate change in the high Arctic, and the transition to clean energy systems that will help us reduce the adverse effects of climate change in the future.