Hamed Sanei is a prominent professor, researcher and geoscientist specializing in organic petrology and organic geochemistry, with research spanning environmental geochemistry, energy geoscience, and carbon dioxide removal (CDR). He is currently Professor at Aarhus University and Director of the Lithospheric Organic Carbon (LOC) Laboratory. Previously, he served as a Senior Research Scientist at the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC), where he led the Unconventional Reservoir Characterization project and contributed to national programs focused on Earth resources, environmental baselines, and geochemical risk.

Professor Sanei is widely recognized for advances in the application of mercury (Hg) anomalies as stratigraphic and environmental indicators of large igneous province volcanism and associated global change. His early work documenting pronounced Hg enrichments across the Permian–Triassic boundary helped establish “mercury fingerprinting” as a tool for investigating volcanic forcing and environmental perturbation during major biotic crises. Building on this theme, his research has examined the transport, sequestration, and long-term fate of mercury and organic carbon across contrasting depositional settings, including high-latitude aquatic systems and deep-ocean environments. In the Canadian High Arctic, he contributed to improved understanding of the processes governing mercury accumulation in aquatic sediments, emphasizing the role of ecosystem productivity and in situ biogeochemical cycling alongside atmospheric inputs. His work has also explored mercury and organic carbon fluxes to the deepest parts of the ocean, including hadal trench environments, highlighting the importance of extreme settings as sinks within global biogeochemical cycles.

In energy geoscience, Professor Sanei has developed and applied integrated petrographic and geochemical frameworks to evaluate organic matter transformation and its implications for reservoir quality in unconventional systems. He has contributed models that link thermal maturity, organic matter evolution, and pore-system development in tight reservoirs, and has investigated long-term alteration of organic molecular structures in organic-rich shales, including the influence of radiogenic processes over geological time. Across these themes, a unifying aspect of his work is the use of organic petrography and geochemistry to connect microscopic carbon structure with macroscopic Earth-system and engineering outcomes.

In recent years, Professor Sanei has focused on the science of durable carbon storage via biochar and broader CDR pathways. He developed the Inertinite Benchmark (IBRo2%), a geologically grounded approach to assessing biochar stability and permanence by linking biochar carbon characteristics to inertinite, the most refractory form of sedimentary organic carbon. This work supports transparent, evidence-based permanence assessment and aims to strengthen confidence in carbon accounting and crediting frameworks by connecting modern engineered carbon to well-constrained geological analogues. He is a co-founder of Fusinite Ltd., a digital platform supporting verification, reporting, and interpretation of carbon storage quality in biochar, and a co-founder of Sunstones ApS (sunstones.dk), which explores carbon mineralization and the use of geological materials to support durable carbon storage solutions.

Professor Sanei has held leadership roles within major international scientific communities, including serving as President of The Society for Organic Petrology (TSOP) and the Canadian Society of Organic Petrology (CSCOP). He also contributes at the science–policy–industry interface as a technical advisor to Biochar Europe and AxessImpact, supporting the development of rigorous and practical standards for carbon storage, monitoring, reporting, and verification. Through research, leadership, and translational activities, his work bridges fundamental understanding of the Earth’s organic carbon cycle with applications in energy transition and climate mitigation.