Dr. Sears is a retired faculty member from the LSU Craft and Hawkins Department of Petroleum Engineering, serving from 2005 until 2017, including 6 years as Department Chair. He received BS and MS degrees from the University of Florida in Geology, and a PhD from Penn State in Geochemistry. Prior to arriving at LSU, Stephen Sears worked at Shell Oil Company, spending time in New Orleans among other locations as a geologist and manager. He is the author of over forty technical, scientific and general interest publications on geology, engineering and higher education. Since his retirement from LSU, he has started a third career as a novelist.
Stephen grew up in South Florida, boating and fishing off of the Florida Keys and in the Everglades, hobbies that he continues to pursue today in south Louisiana. He became interested in the World War II German U-Boat campaign in 2001, when he was on an oil field vessel that discovered the sunken U-166 on the Gulf of Mexico seafloor in mile deep water. His travels to South America, including Venezuela, created an interest in the history and geology of the continent.
Stephen Sears currently lives with his wife, Barbara, in Mandeville, Louisiana. His first novel, Sunniland, was published in August 2019. His second novel, The Orinoco Uranium, was released in April 2023.
