Nicole Lautze

Professor, University of Hawai’i Mānoa

2017 Education Award Winner

Nicole Lautze is a Full Professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM) Hawaiʻi Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, as well as Founder and Director of UHM’s Hawaiʻi Groundwater and Geothermal Resources Center (HGGRC). During her tenure at UHM, she has secured grants and donations worth nearly $33.4 million as Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator and funded the employment of over 50 postdoctoral fellows, staff members, and students. She led a team of senior scientists in the development of an updated geothermal resource assessment for the State of Hawaiʻi. The resource assessment involved the compilation and collection of geological, geochemical, and geophysical data across the state and the development and implementation of a statistical methodology. This methodology integrates the data into a geothermal resource probability map and culminated with validating a potential geothermal resource on Lānaʻi Island through drilling. Lautze also led a geothermal digitization effort for the state that culminated in the launch of www.higp.hawaii.edu/hggrc in 2015. The HGGRC website is a community resource that has attracted hundreds of thousands of hits and more than 500,000 document downloads since launch. Lautze holds a PhD in Geology and Geophysics from UHM and a Bachelor of Science in Geology from University of California, Los Angeles. She received two Fulbright fellowships (to Italy and Peru), a National Science Foundation International Research Fellowship (to Italy), and a U.S. Geological Survey Mendenhall Postdoctoral Fellowship.