March ESE Newsletter

Members of the Rock Mechanics group were awarded a grant from the European FP7 Energy 2012 project.

Publications

Leung, C.T.O., Hoch, A.R., Zimmerman, R.W. (2012). Comparison of discrete fracture network and equivalent continuum simulations of fluid flow through two-dimensional fracture networks for the DECOVALEX–2011 project. Mineralogical Magazine, December. doi:10.1180/minmag.2012.076.8.31. Article available online.

Passchier, S., Bohaty, S.M., Jimenez-Espejo, F., Pross, J., Roehl, U., van de Flierdt, T., Escutia, C., Brinkhuis, H. (2013). Early Eocene – to middle Miocene cooling and aridification of East Antarctica. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems. doi:10.1002/ggge.20106. Article available online.

Lonergan L., NH Jamin, CA-L, Jackson, HD Johnson. (2013). U-shaped slope gully systems and sediment waves on the Gabon passive margin (West Africa). Marine Geology; doi: 10.1016/j.margeo.2013.02.001. Article available online.

Martinez, P. Soto, J., Comas, M, Lonergan, L. Watts, AB. (2013). Strike-slip tectonics and basin inversion in the Western Mediterranean: the Post-Messinian evolution of the Alboran Sea. Basin Research, 25, 1–27, doi: 10.1111/bre.12005. Article available online.

Wilson, D.J., Piotrowski, A.M., Galy, A., Clegg, J.A. (2013). Reactivity of neodymium carriers in deep sea sediments: Implications for boundary exchange and paleoceanography. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. doi: 10.1016/j.gca.2013.01.042. Article available online.

Prytulak, J., Nielsen, S.G., Plank, T., Barker, M., Elliott, T. (2013). Assessing the utility of thallium and thallium isotopes for tracing subduction zone inputs to the Mariana arc. Chemical Geology. doi: 10.1016/j.chemgeo.2013.03.003. Article available online.

Prytulak, J., Nielsen, S.G., Ionov, D.A., Halliday, A.N., Harvey, J., Kelley, K.A., Niu, Y.L., Peate, D.W., Shimizu, K., Sims, K.W.W. (2013). The stable vanadium isotope composition of the mantle and mafic lavas. Earth and Planetary Science Letters. doi: 10.1016/j.epsl.2013.01.010. Article available online.

Research Grants

Robert Zimmerman and Adriana Paluszny received €261,353 from the EC, as part of the FP7-ENERGY-2012 project “TRUST— High resolution monitoring, real time visualization and reliable modeling of highly controlled, intermediate and up-scalable size pilot injection tests of underground storage of CO2”.

Zita Martins was awarded a £12,000 International Exchanges grant (Royal Society), to collaborate with the University of Leiden (The Netherlands) on the project "The role of mineral matrices in the detection and stability of biomarkers".

New Staff

Matthias Willbold has joined the MAGIC group as a NERC advanced research fellow. He started on 1 March 2013 and will be here for five years.

PhD Vivas

Hanli de la Porte passed her viva on her thesis entitled “Sensitivities to Component Characterizations of Heavy Oil Viscosity in Numerical Reservoir Simulation of Steam-Injection Processes”, on 28 January 2013. The thesis was supervised by Velisa Vesovic of ESE, and Chuck Kossack of Schlumberger. The internal examiner was Peter King, and the external examiner was Marcel Polikar from Shell Canada.

Rebecca (Riki) Hihinashvili passed her viva, supervised by Raphael Blumenfeld and examined by Tomaso Aste (UCL) and Chris Pain. The thesis title was "Morphological characterisation of porous materials for fuel cell technology".

Impact, Outreach, Media

Zita Martins participated in a National Science & Engineering Week event organized by the British Science Association. She was the teacher of an Astrobiology lesson set in the year 2063, which was considered the best lesson of the day by students of Year 7.

The third Earthclass outreach event was held in the department on the 26th March with 42 GCSE students from three schools attending. They took part in a series of activities and talks during the day, all based around the Earth sciences and the research we do here in the ESE. Feedback from the event was very positive with 86% of the students saying they now want to apply to Imperial College. Many thanks to all our activity volunteers: Gareth Morris, Carys Cook, Katie Cole, Emma Passmore, Mike Streule, Marion Ferrat, Gareth Collins, Alex Norori-McCormac, Katy Murphy, Jon Tennant, Jon Hill, Dhanvi Bosamia and David Wilson.The next Earthclass will be held in September and if you would like to get involved please contact Gareth Morris (earthclass@imperial.ac.uk).