Pub Science, sampling the Chicxulub impact crater and conference talks aplenty: another busy month in ESE

Publications
Conferences, Lectures and Seminars
Awards
Research Grants
Research Activity
Impact and Media
Outreach
Fieldwork
New Staff
Other Announcements

Publications

Martins, Z., Modica, P., Zanda, B., and Le Sergeant d'Hendecourt, L. (2015) The amino acid and hydrocarbon contents of the Paris meteorite: Insights into the most primitive CM chondrite. Meteoritics & Planetary Science. DOI: 10.1111/maps.12442 p> 

Degond P., Lozinski A., Putra Muljadi, B., and Narski, J. (2015). Crouzeix-Raviart MsFEM with Bubble Functions for Diffusion and Advection-Diffusion in Perforated Media. Communications in Computational Physics, 17(04), 887 - 907.

Petvipusit, K. R., & Chang, Y. (2015). Dynamic Well Conversion and Rate Optimisation Using Ensemble-based Method. Society of Petroleum Engineers. doi:10.2118/173829-MS

Holland, R.A., Eigenbrod, F., Muggeridge, A., Brown, G., Clarke, D., Taylor, G., (2015), A synthesis of the ecosystem services impact of second generation bioenergy crop production. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 46, 30-40. DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2015.02.003

Krevor, S., Blunt, M.J., Benson, S.M., Pentland, C.H., Reynolds, C., Al-Menhali, A., Niu, B., (2015) Capillary trapping for geologic carbon dioxide storage - From pore scale physics to field scale implications. International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control.  

Kluge, T., and John, C.M., 2015. Effects of brine chemistry and polymorphism on clumped isotopes revealed by laboratory precipitation of mono- and multiphase calcium carbonates, Geochmimica et Cosmochimica Acta (doi:10.1016/j.gca.2015.03.031), volume 160, pp 155-168

Ventura, G.T., Gall, L., Siebert, C., Prytulak, J., Szatmari, P., Hurlimann, M., Halliday, A.N. (2015). The stable isotope composition of vanadium, nickel, and molybdenum in crude oils. Applied Geochemistry. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0883292715000931.

Conferences, Lectures and Seminars

Trevor Almeida attended PICO 2015, the Third Conference on Frontiers of Aberration Corrected Electron Microscopy, held at Kasteel Vaalsbroek in the Netherlands, where he presented his work ‘Direct visualisation of the thermomagnetic behaviour of pseudo-single-domain magnetite particles’. His attendance was funded by the Arthur Holmes Centenary Grant.  

PhD student Saba Manzoor gave an invited talk entitled ‘A methodology of the assessment of environmental and human health risks from amine emissions from post combustion CO₂ capture technology’ at the EGU in Vienna, Austria from 12-17 April 2015. Saba also gave an invited talk entitled, ‘Exposure and human health risk assessment of the impacts from amine emissions from post combustion CO₂ capture technology’ at the 3rd UK and Ireland Exposure Science Meeting, Imperial College London, 24th April.  

Ajit Singh gave an oral presentation at EGU Vienna titled 'Large–scale avulsion of the late Quaternary Sutlej river in the NW Indo–Gangetic foreland basin'. His attendance was supported by the Arthur Holmes Centenary Research Fund.

 "The Basins Research group was out in force at the 2015 EGU conference in Vienna. Rebecca Bell gave an invited talk at EGU entitled ‘Fault zone structure and seismic reflection characteristics in zones of slow slip and tsunami earthquakes’. She also presented a poster on ‘Strain migration during multiphase extension: observations from the northern North Sea’ Thomas Phillips presented a talk at EGU entitled 'Basement structure controls on the geometry and evolution of rift systems - insights from offshore S. Norway using 3D seismic reflection data' Johan Claringbould presented a talk entitled "Diachronous growth of normal fault systems in multiphase rift basins: Structural evolution of the East Shetland Basin, northern North Sea”.  

Ann Muggeridge chaired the EAGE IOR Symposium in Dresden from 14th-16th April. There were six papers presented or authored by members of ESE : Aldhuwaihi, King, P.R., A., Muggeridge A.H.,Upscaling Polymer Flooding to Model Sub-gridblock Geological Heterogeneity and Compensate for Numerical Dispersion. Alroudhan, A., Vinogradov, J. and Jackson, M.D., Zeta Potential in Carbonates at Reservoir Conditions - Applications to IOR Alsofi, A.M., Blunt, M.J., The Decomposition of Volumetric Sweep Efficiency and Its Utility in EOR Simulations. Krevor, S., Niu, B., Reynolds, C., Al-Menhali, A., The Impact of Reservoir Conditions on Capillarity, Multiphase Flow and Hysteresis for CO2-brine Systems. Maes, J., Muggeridge, A.H., Jackson, M.D., Quintard, M., Lapene, A., Sensitivity Analysis of the Performance of In-Situ UPgrading for the Recovery of Heavy Oil Using Dimensionless Analysis. Zhou, Y., Muggeridge, A.H., Berg, C.F., King, P.R., Quantifying Viscous Cross-Flow and Its IMpact on Tertiary Polymer Flooding in Heterogeneous Reservoirs.

Ann Muggeridge gave an invited talk at the IOR Norway 2015 conference held at the University of Stavanger from 28-29 April. The title of the talk was "The Effectiveness of Tertiary EOR in Heterogeneous Reservoirs".

Awards 

Al Fraser has been awarded the 2015 Geological Society Petroleum Group Medal, in recognition of his contribution to industry, academia and geosciences. The Medal is highest acknowledgement possible from your peers and will be awarded at the Geological Society Annual Dinner on 18 June.   

Research Grants

Dylan Rood is a co-investigator on a ~£100k NERC standard grant awarded to Imperial entitled "Reconstructing millennial-scale ice sheet change in the western Amundsen Sea Embayment, Antarctica, using high-precision exposure dating." The project is a collaboration among Imperial, British Antarctic Survey, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (Columbia University, USA), Pennsylvania State University (USA), and Durham. 

A Mineralogical Society Student Bursary has been awarded to PhD student. Martin Mangler. The Mineralogical Society will co-finance Martin’s attendance at the IAVCEI conference in Prague 25 June 2015 with an amount of £400. At the volcanologist’s meeting, he will present the first results of his research on Popocatépetl volcano, Mexico.  

Research Activity

Zita Martins was elected as a Member of the Space Environments Working Group (SEWG) of the UK Space Agency (UKSA).  

Impact and Media

Joanna Morgan was one of a group of scientists who met at the Parque Cientifico y Tecnolólogico de Yucatán in Mérida, Mexico (30-31 March) to discuss the ‘Chicxulub K-Pg Impact Crater Expedition’ which will be carried in the spring of 2016 by the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling (ECORD), part of the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP). The project has been widely reported in the local press. Joanna is one of two scientists to lead offshore drilling expedition information on which can also now be found as a podcast on Imperial Media. 

Following the announcement on 8th April of a giant oil field extending across most of SE England Dick Selley was contacted for information, quoted and/or interviewed by the the Times, the Independent, the Daily Mail, the New Scientist, ITN News, ITV Scotland, Platts News, the New York Times, the BBC, BBC 5Live, BBC Radio Surrey and the Farmers' Weekly. He was able to calm the media down. ???

As part of the international Pint of Science festival in which top academics publically present their research, in a pub, ESE is hosting a Planet Earth themed event at the Hoop and Toy, South Kensington. The event runs for 3 consecutive nights from Monday 18th May - Wednesday, 20th May, with exciting talks from ESE academics Susie Maidment, Mark Sephton, Martin Siegert, Zita Martins, Phillipa Mason and Chris Jackson.

Fieldwork

MSc Petroleum Geophysics students took part in the EAGE’s “Geophysics Boot Camp”, 28 March to 5 April 2015.  Under the supervision of Adam Booth as Academic Project Leader of the EAGE initiative, the MSc class braved high-winds and hail to perform a series of industrial-scale geophysical acquisitions to characterise the structure of Germany’s Emlichheim oilfield.  The centerpiece of the Camp was a seismic reflection campaign using an industrial Vibroseis truck – which the students drove and operated around the site! – but gravity, seismic refraction and electromagnetic methods were also incorporated.  James Hammond and Alistair Boyce were also involved with the camp, providing GPS surveys and operations support.

MSc Petroleum Geoscience students completed their three weeks of field work in the United States. Following carbonate sedimentology, the students moved on to clastic sedimentology, structural geology and salt tectonics in Utah. The latter two weeks of the US geo-tour were led by Chris Jackson, Gary Hampson and Lidia Lonergan, and aided by Carl Jacquemyn, Susannah Maidment, Daisy Rood, Adamu Suleiman, Carl McDermott and Alex Coleman. The students (and staff) have since recovered from their jetlag and returned to the UK safe and sound.

Susie Maidment has been in in Utah for a month, studying the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation and collecting samples for magnetostratigraphic analysis and radiometric dating, ably assisted by PhD student Christopher Dean.

New Staff

Mitch D'Arcy started this week as a Teaching Fellow. Mitch, a postgraduate from the department is just submitting his PhD and can now be found in Emma Passmores' office (1.37).

Other Announcements

The Bank of Montreal (BMO) has recently made a gift to Imperial to establish the BMO Scholarship for Women in Metals and Energy Finance. The scholarship of £30,000, which will first be awarded for the 2015-2016 academic year, is open to female students on the MSc in Metals and Energy Finance who demonstrate exceptional academic merit and/or potential.

The Departmental Silver Swan renewal application was submitted to Athena on 30th April. Ann and Ian would like to thank everyone for their contributions and feedback. The results of the assessment will come out in June/July.