ESE Royal Academy Enterprise Fellow wins MIT Technology Award

Contents

Publications
Conferences, Lectures and Seminars
Awards
Research Activity
Outreach
PhD Vivas
Obituary

SGI

Publications

Amitai, S., and Blumenfeld, R. (2017). Affine and topological structural entropies in granular statistical mechanics: explicit calculations and equation of state, Phys. Rev. E 95, 052905

Blumenfeld, R., Amitai, S., Jordan, J, F., and Hihinashvili, R. (2017). Reply to comment on "On the failure of the volume function in granular statistical mechanics and an alternative formulation", Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 039802.

Darbyshire, F. A., I. D. Bastow, L. Petrescu, A. Gilligan, and D. A. Thompson (2017), A tale of two orogens: Crustal processes in the Proterozoic Trans-Hudson and Grenville Orogens, eastern Canada, Tectonics, 36, doi:10.1002/2017TC004479.

Genge, M. J., Suttle, M. and Van Ginneken, M., (2017). Thermal shock fragmentation of Mg silicates within scoriaceous micrometeorites reveal hydrated asteroidal sources. Geology. doi:10.1130/G39426.1/353690

Rio, J. P. and Mannion, P. D. (2017). The osteology of the giant snake Gigantophis garstini from the upper Eocene of North Africa and its bearing on the phylogenetic relationships and biogeography of Madtsoiidae. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. DOI:10.1080/02724634.2017.1347179.

Smalley, P.C., and Chebotar, K. (2017). Event-based risk management for subsurface risks: An approach to protect value generation from oil and gas fields. AAPG Bulletin v101 p1473-1486. DOI:10.1306/11301616084

Conferences, Lectures and Seminars

Phil Mannion and PhD student Jonathan Rio both gave talks at the annual meeting of the European Association of Vertebrate Palaeontologists in Munich, Germany, from the 31 July to 3 August. Phil gave an overview of his latest work on the evolutionary relationships of sauropod dinosaurs, and Jonathan presented their now-published work on the giant snake Gigantophis from the Paleogene of Egypt. Phil and PhD student Ale Chiarenza also attended the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Calgary, Canada, from the 23–26 August. Phil gave a talk on the impact of biases on the crocodylomorph fossil record, presented a poster on Jonathan’s Gigantophis work, and co-authored a talk on the evolutionary relationships of early sauropodomorph dinosaurs. Ale presented his PhD research on using ecological niche modelling to reconstruct Cretaceous dinosaur diversity.

PhD students Alistair Boyce, Thomas Eeken and Chris Ogden from the Plates & Mantle research group, travelled to Aberdeen for the BGA Postgraduate Research in Progress conference (31 August—1 September). After a series of outstanding presentations, Alistair was awarded a prize for his talk on North American P-wave seismic tomography. Thomas presented a poster on metasomatism in cratonic lithosphere and Chris presented a poster on broadband seismology in Cyprus.

The Sustainable Gas Institute (SGI) and Research Centre for Gas Innovation (RCGI) are hosting their second annual conference in natural gas sustainability on Tuesday 19th and Wednesday 20th September 2017 at University of São Paulo, Brazil.

This is a unique conference that will bring 250+ stakeholders together to meet; share knowledge, exchange ideas, gain insight, and showcase expertise to fully understand the role of natural gas in the global energy landscape.

White Paper 3 – A Greener Gas Grid: What are the options? – Dr Jamie Speirs, Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London

MUSE Global – The MUSE model: a novel approach to energy systems modelling - Dr Sara Giarola, Dr Daniel Crow, Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London

Techno-economic analysis of thermoelectrics for waste heat recovery – Dr Kris Anderson and Professor Nigel Brandon, Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London

LNG research at Imperial – engineering perspective – Professor Velisa Vesovic, Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London

Technical and Economic Assessment of Natural Gas – related technologies to optimise the utilisation of CH4 & CO2 in the Santos Basin Pre Salt Cluster – Mr Cristiano Borges, Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial

Awards

Enass Abo-Hamed, a Royal Academy Enterprise Fellow from the Department of Earth Science and Engineering is the winner of the MIT Technology Review Innovators under 35 in Europe. Enass won the award for her research in the development of a new energy storage system. Enass has a startup called H2GO, which is designing low cost hydrogen-production and energy stoarge technologies, aimed particularly for places where access to the grid is limited. 

Research Activity

PhD student Helen Lacey is continuing her collaboration with the China Earthquake Administration in Beijing this month, undertaking laboratory experiments to recreate silent earthquakes. She has also been visiting the geological sights in China, including the Zhangye coloured mountains and the Guilin karst. This week, she has been tweeting from the @GeoSciTweeps account, the ro-cur account for geoscientists and earth scientists talking about her work and the geology of China.”

Outreach

PhD student Martin Suttle was also co-author on a science article for The Conversation looking at a new project using remote automated cameras to observe incoming meteor/fireballs. 

PhD Vivas

Congratulations to Dr. Laura Petrescu, who successfully defended her PhD thesis. Laura was supervised by Ian Bastow, and moves on to a research position at the National Institute for Earth Physics, Romania.

Obituary

PAUL GARRARD B.Sc., Ph.D., D.I.C., C.Eng., MIMM, FGS.

In the late spring of this year, Paul Garrard died at the age of 79 after a tragic fall whilst walking his pet dog.

Paul will be remembered by many staff and students as a dedicated and talented teacher who helped ensure that graduates from the Royal School of Mines are the most capable in the world. Paul’s legacy is the thousands of students that he taught who have gone on to shape the world.

Paul was an RSM man through and through. Prof. Dick Selley, an ex-head of department said of him “If Paul was a stick of rock you would find the letters ‘RSM’ embedded in it from end to end.” Paul came from a working-class background an obtained a degree from the Royal School of Mines in Geology in 1960. He then went on to spend 5 years mapping the Precambrian basement in Rhodesia for the Geological Survey – a time where he perfected the mapping skills that would become legendary amongst students. In 1965 Paul joined Anglo American Cu mines whilst at the same time working on his PhD at the RSM.

At beginning of the 1970s, Rex Davies, the then Prof. of Mining Geology offered him a position as a Lecturer in Mining Geology. His specific role was to run the field work programme and in particular field mapping. He was the perfect man for the job.

Paul remained at Imperial for the next 30 years as lecturer then Senior Lecturer. During this time his gift for teaching and inspiring students became legendary. His contribution to teaching was recognised by the College when in 1995 the ‘College Teaching Award for Geology’ was bestowed upon him.

Paul Garrard will be remembered by most staff and students as a kind but demanding teacher, whose expectations were high and whose feedback and help was second to none. Students who were lucky enough to go on the Kinlochleven fieldtrip with Paul, a trip he ran for 25 years with John Cosgrove, will still have field note books in which each diagram and locality is adorned by helpful advice in red ink. They will remember his patient explanations and his habit of making folds, boudins and even entire mountain belts using his over-sized hands. One student joked “it took 30 million years for the Alps to form, but I saw Paul make them with his hands in 30 seconds”. Paul worked students hard and never saw why a little rain, even if moving horizontal, should ruin a day of geology. The students knew that the weather would only end a day’s fieldwork if Paul’s pipe went out. In the harshest weather students would watch the smouldering pipe for signs of an early return home, only to be disappointed when he would turn it upside-down. Paul was a gentleman geologist, with pipe and flat cap, who was apparently carved from rock.

The commitment that Paul put into his teaching came from his love for Geology and a job done right. Paul knew that the legacy and reputation of a Royal School of Mines is not just in scientific and engineering developments, but in the quality of its graduates and their impact on the world.

Paul is survived by his wife Shelagh and sons Mike and Ian.