Dr Jonathan Smith

Jonathan is Visiting Professor of Contaminant Hydrogeology at Sheffield and a Senior Hydrogeologist at Shell Projects & Technology, based in Rijswijk, The Netherlands.

At Shell Jonathan is involved with a wide variety of soil and groundwater research, environmental risk assessment and management for assets around the world, and in Shell’s global soil and groundwater advocacy programme.

He leads Shell’s technical S&GW advocacy team, and is Shell’s global subject matter expert on ‘sustainable and risk-based remediation’ of soil and groundwater.

His research interests at Sheffield are focused on contaminant attenuation processes in aquifers and at the groundwater - surface water interface.

This includes investigations to understand the significance of degradation and retardation processes for a range of contaminants in hyporheic zone sediments, and the relationships between geomorphological properties and natural attenuation capacity.

Prior to joining Shell in 2008, Jonathan spent 15 years at the Environment Agency developing regulatory policy and guidance for contaminated land/groundwater, including risk assessment (Remedial Targets method; ConSim; LandSim), and remediation [eg guidance on monitored natural attenuation (MNA) and permeable reactive barriers (PRBs)].

Jonathan represented the UK on European Commission fora on the 2006 Groundwater Directive, and co-authored European Commission Guidance on the characterisation of water bodies for the purposes of the Water Framework Directive.

Jonathan is a SiLC and a Chartered Geologist. He chairs Sustainable Remediation Forum–UK (SuRF-UK) and the Soil and Groundwater Task Force at CONCAWE. He is a member of the CL:AIRE Technical & Research Group.