Mr James Kear

James Kear is a civil and environmental engineer and Research Group Leader in the Energy Resources Research Program at CSIRO. He has research experience in the fields of underground energy storage, subsurface fluid injection, well integrity, hydraulic fracturing, environmental risk assessments, rock mechanics, sustainable design and systems thinking.

Over the last 10 years James has been in a people leadership role as a Team Leader and Group Leader of research staff. In these roles, James has enjoyed building high performance project teams, creating a vibrant and inclusive work environment and enabling staff to maximise their impact, commercial and scientific contributions.

On the technical side, James is an accomplished experimentalist with expertise in the areas of hydraulic fracturing, shale chemoporomechanical behaviour and material property testing. Specifically his experimental hydraulic fracturing work examined interactions between closely spaced fractures, hydraulic fracture interface crossing behaviour (height growth), fracture initiation and re-orientation and delamination of wellbore annuli.