Fieldwork on flood boulders in Cape Verde, volcanoes in Mexico and geophysical techniques in Cyprus

Contents

Publications
Conferences, Lectures and Seminars
Awards
Research Grants
Workshops and Courses
Impact and Media
Outreach
Fieldwork
Alumni Activity
International Women’s Day
Announcements

Publications

Attar, A., & Muggeridge, A. (2016, March 23).Evaluation of Mixing in Low Salinity Waterflooding. Society of Petroleum Engineers. http://dx.doi.org/10.2118/179803-MS

Bates, K.T., Mannion, P.D., Falkingham, P.L., Brusatte, S.L., Hutchinson, J.R., Otero, A., Sellers, W.I., Sullivan, C., Stevens, K.A., Allen, V. (2016). Temporal and phylogenetic evolution of the sauropod dinosaur body plan. Royal Society Open Science 3, 150636 (doi: 10.1098/rsos.150408).

Briggs, D.E.G, Siveter, Derek J., Siveter, David J., Sutton M.D. &  Legg, D. (2016). Tiny individuals attached to a new Silurian arthropod  suggest a unique mode of brood care. PNAS  published ahead of print April 4, 2016, doi:10.1073/pnas.1600489113 

Blumenfeld, R., Amitai, S., Jordan, J.F., Hihinashvili, R. (2016). Failure of the Volume Function in Granular Statistical Mechanics and an Alternative Formulation. Physical Review Letters 116, 148001.

Bhutani, G., Brito-Parada, P.R., Cilliers, J.J. (2016). Polydispersed flow modelling using population balances in an adaptive mesh finite element framework. Computers and Chemical Engineering 87, 208-225.

Ebigbo, A., Niederau, J., Marquart, G., Dini, I., Thorwart, M., Rabbel, W., Pechnig, R., Bertani, R., & Clauser, C. (2016). Influence of depth, temperature, and structure of a crustal heat source on the geothermal reservoirs of Tuscany: numerical modelling and sensitivity study. Geothermal Energy, 4(5). DOI 10.1186/s40517-016-0047-7http://www.geothermal-energy-journal.com/content/4/1/5

Garwood, R.J., Dunlop, J.A., Selden, P.A., Spencer, A.R.T., Atwood, R.C., Vo, N.T., and Drakopoulos, M. 2016. Almost a Spider: A 305-Million-Year-Old Fossil Arachnid and Spider Origins. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 283 (1827). doi:10.1098/rspb.2016.0125.

Nielsen, S.G., Yogodzinski, G., Prytulak, J., Plank, T., Kay, S.M., Kay, R.W., Blusztajn, J., Owens, J.D., Auro, M., Kading, T. 2016. Tracking along-arc sediment input to the Aleutian arc using thallium isotopes. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, doi: 10.1016/j.gca.2016.03.010.

Petrescu, L., Bastow, I. D., Darbyshire, F. A., Gilligan, A., Bodin, T., Menke, W., & Levin, V. (2016). Three billion years of crustal evolution in eastern Canada: Constraints from receiver functions. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.

Singh, K., Bijeljic, B. & Blunt, M.J. (2016). Imaging of oil layers, curvature and contact angle in a mixed-wet and a water-wet carbonate rock. Water Resources Research, 52, 1-13. doi:10.1002/2015WR018072. Open access link

Seidler, R.,  Padalkina, K., Bücker, H. M., Ebigbo, A., Herty, M., Marquart, G., & Niederau, J. (2016) Optimal experimental design for reservoir property estimates in geothermal exploration. Computational Geosciences. DOI 10.1007/s10596-016-9565-4 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10596-016-9565-4

Smith, R.C., Hill, J., Collins, G.S., Piggott, M.D., Kramer, S.C., Parkinson, S.D., Wilson, C. (2016). Comparing approaches for numerical modelling of tsunami generation by deformable submarine slides. Ocean Modelling, 100(Apr.), 125–140.doi:10.1016/j.ocemod.2016.02.007

Tennant, J.P., Mannion, P.D., Upchurch, P. (2016). Environmental drivers of crocodyliform extinction across the Jurassic/Cretaceous interval. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B 20152840 (doi: 10.1098/rspb.2015.2840).

Tjaden, B., Cooper, S. J., Brett, D. J. L., Kramer, D. and Shearing, P. R. (2016) On the origin and application of the Bruggeman correlation for analysing transport phenomena in electrochemical systems. Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering 12,44-51 

Conferences, Lectures and Seminars

The Palaeobiology Research Group was well represented at this year's Lyell Meeting at the Geological Society (9th March) on the topic of Palaeoinformatics. Phil Mannion was a co-author on an invited talk, and Ale Chiarenza, Chris Dean and Jon Tennant were all also in attendance.

David Wilson gave a seminar at UCL on 8 March, entitled “Deep ocean circulation and continental weathering in the glacial world: insights from combined Nd and Pb isotope tracers”.

Ahmed Attar presented “Evaluation of Mixing in Low Salinity Waterflooding” in the SPE EOR Conference at Oil and Gas West Asia, 21-23 March, Muscat, Oman

Several members of ESE attended the Rifts-III conference at the Geological Society co-organised by Al Fraser. Ian Bastow delivered two talks on the subject of rifting in East Africa. Christopher Jackson, Jenny Collier, Bhavik Lodhia, Carl MacDermott and Craig Magee were also in attendance to present posters and talks.

Emma Passmore and Mike Streule gave a talk at the recent college Education day on the Transformative learning potential of geological fieldwork.

Kathryn Hadler gave the inaugural talk to the Women in Mining Student Chapter at Camborne School of Mines called 'Where are the women in mineral processing?' on the 14 March, using conference data to show that while about 14% of mineral processing professionals are women, crushing rocks (comminution) definitely attracts fewer women than flotation. 

Dick Selley gave a keynote presentation on UK shale gas at a Petroleum Group conference at the Geological Society.

Masters student Dasha Shalashova, who is currently a student on the MSc Metals & Energy Finance program and the recipient of BMO Scholarship for Women, attended the BMO Capital Markets 25th Annual Global Metals & Mining Conference held in Florida in March.

The MAGIC group had a dominant presence at the annual Research in Progress meeting of the Geochemistry Group (Geological Society of London) held in Leeds from March 30^th-31^st. Myriam Lambelet gave a keynote address and accepted her Postdoctoral Medal for best geochemistry paper of 2015 by a UK-based postdoc. Oral presentations were given by PhD students Rachel Bertram (honorable mention for best talk), Patric Simoes Pereira, Martin Mangler, and Feixiang Wei (honorable mention for best talk) and MSci student Sarah Howarth (winner for best talk).  PhD student Tabea Junk presented a prize winning poster. Naomi Pratt, David Wilson, Tina van de Flierdt, Susan Little and Julie Prytulak also attended.

Awards

Jan Cilliers has been awarded the Futers Gold Medal by the Institute of materials minerals and mining.

Sam Krevor and Martin Blunt have been awarded funding to study CO2 storage and leaky flow through faults and heterogeneous overburden of storage reservoirs in the UK North Sea.  The project was awarded through the NERC Autumn 2015 Highlights Topics call. It includes partners from the University of Cambridge, the British Geological Survey, the University of Strathclyde, and industry supporters BP, Shell, and Zeiss x-ray microscopy. The award is £865,000 from the total £2.2M consortium grant. The project begins 1 May

Ian Bastow was awarded a small grant from the Royal Astronomical Society to help study the Troodos Ophiolite in Cyprus using seismology

Samuel Cooper received the John Kilner prize for best PhD in Energy Materials 2016. 

Craig Magee has been awarded Halstead Award from the Geologist’s Association, which is a new award presented to ‘early career scientists who have made a substantial contribution to any area of geology’.

Research Grants

Sam Krevor and Martin Blunt have been awarded funding to study CO2 storage and leaky flow through faults and heterogeneous overburden of storage reservoirs in the UK North Sea.  The project was awarded through the NERC Autumn 2015 Highlights Topics call. It includes partners from the University of Cambridge, the British Geological Survey, the University of Strathclyde, and industry supporters BP, Shell, and Zeiss x-ray microscopy.  The award is £865,000 from the total £1.8M consortium grant. The project begins May 1st.

Workshops and Courses

Maartje Boon and Sam Krevor hosted the Crunchflow short course, taught by Carl Steefel of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Jennifer Druhan of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, developers of the leading reactive transport codes Crunflow and CrunchTope. The course took place over two days in the computer lab in 3.34. It included students and academics from Imperial College and 8 other universities throughout the UK. Professor Druhan gave an entertaining seminar to the PGE group and course participants enjoyed a social evening at the Queen’s Arms and Med Kitchen. Many thanks to Zac and Theo for the IT support. 

Impact and Media

Kamaljit Singh, Branko Bijeljic and Martin Blunt’s paper “Imaging of oil layers, curvature and contact angle in a mixed-wet and a water-wet carbonate rock” has been featured by Water Resources Research journal.

The paper “On the failure of the volume function in granular statistical mechanics and an alternative formulation” by Rafi Blumenfeld’s group, published and highlighted by the editor in Physical Review Letters, was featured in the following news article by the American Physical Society.

Mark Sutton's paper “Tiny individuals attached to a new Silurian arthropod suggest a unique mode of brood care” attracted lots of media attention including from the telegraph, Washington post and new scientist.

Dr Adiana Paluszny made a series of interviews with female PhD students (myself included) and lecturers in our department, that seek to highlight contributions of women in the areas of numerical modelling, simulation, and programming in the context of Maths, Physics, Earth Sciences and Engineering.

A project to drill into the heart of the Chicxulub crater, Mexico using a three-legged lift boat to create a stable platform has been reported by Science magazine. Present aboard during the drilling will be nine scientists including Joanna Morgan and Auriol Rae from ESE.

Outreach

Chris Jackson braved Zone 5 of the London Underground system to give a talk to the Harrow and Hillingdon Geological Society (9th March). His talk was entitled ‘Salt of the Earth’.

Julie Prytulak gave an invited lecture at the Geological Association of London titled “The Biggest Volcano in the World”

Adrian Muxworthy gave a talk to the Herdman Society (undergraduate geophysics society) at the University of Liverpool. 

As part of the Norwegian Research Council-founded MIMES (Mechanical Implications of Magma Emplacement in Sedimentary Sequences) and DIPS (Dynamics of Igneous Plumbing Systems in Sedimentary Basins) projects, on which they are both co-Is, Craig Magee (@drcraigmagee) and Chris Jackson (@seis_matters) engaged in a live ‘tweeting’ session as they interpreted one of the world’s largest sill-like igneous intrusions imaged in seismic reflection data from the NW Shelf of Australia. The ‘Chandon’ sill, so-called after the 3D seismic survey in which it is best-imaged, is 70 km long and 40 km wide. In short, it’s a monster. Follow the DIPS-MIMES project on Twitter at @magma_pulse. 

On 23 March ESE hosted the two-day UK Space Design Competition (UKSDC) Final. The 2016 challenge hosted the largest ever cohort of students, speaking numerous languages and resulted in the biggest pizza bill the department has ever seen!

Fieldwork

PhD students Thomas Berndt, Miguel Valdez Grijalva and Ricardo Ramalho (University of Bristol) spent a week on Santiago Island, Cape Verde to sample large boulders that were emplaced by a mega-tsunami ~73000 years ago. The work is part of a project aiming to develop a new flood dating method based solely on magnetic measurements of flood boulders.

A team of researchers from London and Oxford, including Imperial College PhD student Martin Mangler, went for fieldwork at Popocatépetl volcano, Mexico, from 1 March to 20 March. This was the third field season at the notoriously active volcano for the working group around Chiara Petrone from the Natural History Museum and Julie Prytulak from Imperial College. While during the first visits in 2013 and 2015, the focus was on the collection of a wide range of lavas and pumices from Popo, this time the main goal was establishing a reliable stratigraphy and geological map of the volcano. The volcano showed some activity during the visit, but the most recent large eruption that was also covered in the media unfortunately occurred after the end of the fieldwork. Martin has documented the fieldwork on the Museum’s blog.

The second-year geophysics undergraduates went on a successful field trip to the Troodos mountains in Cyprus in March, where they were trained in the use of near-surface geophysics field techniques by Adrian Muxworthy, Ian Bastow, Lizzie Day, Amy Gilligan, and demonstrators Alex Perrin, Alistair Boyce, Izzy Mackay, and Becca Smith. Paul Denton from the BGS also joined us on the first few days of the trip. The students all worked hard in occasionally tough conditions, and managed to protect the equipment from the many goats we encountered (except for two tape measures, which were eaten!). Staff tweeted about the field trip using the hashtag #RSMCyp16 if you would like to see pictures of the goats!

Alumni Activities

Former PhD student Morteza Nejati, who completed his PhD in December 2015 under the supervision of Adriana Paluszny and Robert Zimmerman, began work this month as a post-doc in the geothermal research group of Prof. Thomas Driesner in the Department of Earth Sciences at ETH Zurich.

International Women's Day

On 8 March, the Department celebrated International Women’s Day with Cake and Free Mugs for all staff and PhD students in an extended coffee break. The Provost for Equality and Diversity Dorothy Griffiths, as well as the Head of the Faculty of Engineering, Jeff Magee attended the coffee and congratulated the Department on the success of the event, which saw an increased number of staff and PhD students attending. Professor Ann Muggeridge (Faculty of Engineering’s Ambassador for Women) had the honour of cutting the cake, which contained the names of every female member of staff and PhD student in the department. Needless to say that by the end of coffee, there was no Cake or Mugs left! Undergraduate and MSci Students were also involved in the celebrations by competing for Mugs during their classes by answering questions chosen by their Lecturers about a variety of topics, including the importance of women in their particular subject area. Thank you to everyone involved that help make the event a success! Pictures of the event will be put up on the ESE webpage shortly.

Announcements

In 2009 the College introduced an annual series of events to recognise the commitment of staff who have given many years of service to Imperial.  The President will be hosting a drinks reception and a dinner to celebrate with staff who passed a milestone anniversary in their service to the College in 2015. Robert Zimmerman, Ann Muggeridge and Joanna Morgan are celebrating 20 years of service whilst Ji-Quan Shi and Jamie Wilkinson celebrate 25 years of service with a drinks reception on 25 April. Barry Coles and Carl Jurczuk celebrate 35 years of service with dinner on 16 May.

The Sustainable gas Institute, Imperial College are advertising for an Energy Modelling Research associate (contract 2 years), closing date for applications is 3 May for more information click here.

The Sustainable Gas Institute (SGI) will be launching its second white paper: "Can technology unlock unburnable carbon?" Following an overview of the report's key findings from the lead author, Dr Sara Budinis, a panel discussion will follow to reflect on the report and the issues raised. The event is on 17 may, more details can be found here.

Imperial Innovations, Imperial Consultants and Imperial Corporate Partners are jointly organising a series of courses titled “Bridging the Gap”, which aims to educate scientists on the benefits and mechanisms of working with industrial partners. The courses are free for Imperial Staff and are particularly aimed at early stage academics (e.g. Post-docs). You can learn more by going to http://inno.im/impcourses