February 2018 ESE Newsletter

Students and staff from ESE went to New Zealand to install seismometers

Contents

Publications
Conferences, Lectures and Seminars
Awards
Research Grants
Research Activity
Workshops and Courses
Impact and Media
Fieldwork

Publications

Derrick, J.G., LaJeunesse, J.W., Davison, T.M., Borg, J.P. and Collins, G.S. (2018). Mesoscale simulations of shock compaction of a granular ceramic: effects of mesostructure and mixed-cell strength treatment. Modelling and Simulation in Materials Science and Engineering, Volume 26, Number 3. https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-651X/aaab7e

Strullu-Derrien C., Spencer A.R.T., Goral T., Dee J., Honegger R., Kenrick P., Longcore J.E. and Berbee M.L. (2017). New insights into the evolutionary history of Fungi from a 407 million year old Blastocladiomycota-like fossil showing a complex hyphal thallus. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Science 373 (1739) 20160502. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2016.0502

Smalley, P.C., Walker, C.D. and Belvedere, P.G. (2018). A practical approach for applying Bayesian logic to determine the probabilities of subsurface scenarios: Example from an offshore oil?eld. AAPG Bulletin 102, 429-445. DOI:10.1306/06051717018

Tennant J.P., Chiarenza A.A. and Baron M. (2018). How has our knowledge of dinosaur diversity through geologic time changed through research history? PeerJ 6:e4417. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4417

Neethling, S.J. and Brito-Parada, P.R. (2018). Predicting flotation behaviour – The interaction between froth stability and performance. Minerals Engineering, 120, 60–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mineng.2018.02.002

Conferences, Lectures and Seminars

Chris Jackson, Sian Evans and Alex Coleman from the Basin Research Group (BRG) were out in force at the GSA Penrose Conference: Advances in Salt Tectonics in Israel (10th - 16th February). All three gave oral presentations at the conference which were well received, and after two intense days of talks they were rewarded with two days of fieldwork in the spectacular Dead Sea Basin. They stood on the shoulder of giants... specifically a salty giant called "Mount Sedom", an active salt diapir rising above the Earth's surface. The salty trio saw world-class exposures of salt-related deformation, an analog to their work in seismic reflection data from Brazil, Angola, and the North Sea. Needless to say, they didn't want to come home.

Carl Jacquemyn gave an invited presentation ‘My geology is too complex for my grid: Grid-free geological modelling of the lower Arab-D’ at the research conference on ‘Recovery of Difficulty Hydrocarbons’. This cross-discipline conference was held at KAUST University (Saudi Arabia) and hosted a discussion with former OPEC president Ali Al-Naimi.

 The Latin American Society of Imperial College held the 1st Symposium “Researchers for Latin America” last 7-8 February, with the support of the Department of Earth Science & Engineering. Diego Mesa (President of the Society) and Dennis Vega (Vice-President) are both PhD students in the Advanced Minerals Processing Research Group. The Symposium hosted a broad range of speakers from mining and environment to biomedical sciences, as well as representatives from the embassies of Chile, Colombia, Argentina and Brazil.

During the closing ceremony, Diego said: “As researchers, it is our collective efforts that might bring science closer to solve the real societal challenges in Latin America. This symposium was not meant to be a single event, but a starting point to unite researchers and spread their results in a vibrant and interdisciplinary way.”

 Follow the LatSoc through their Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/LatImperial/) Twitter (https://twitter.com/Latamsoc).

Awards

PhD student Mitch Liddell recently discovered he was a winner in the seismology section of the Outstanding Paper Awards (OSPA) competition for his poster at the 2017 American Geophysical Union Conference in New Orleans. Congratulations Mitch! https://seismology.agu.org/congratulations-2017-outstanding-student-paper-award-winners/

Recently completed PhD student, Tom Phillips, who undertook his project in the Basin Research Group (BRG) under the supervision of Rebecca Bell, Oliver Duffy (UT Austin), and Chris Jackson, won the ‘Carlos Walter M. Campos Memorial Award’ for Best International Student ‘Paper’ at the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) International Convention and Exhibition, London (15^th-18^th October). His presentation, which was entitled, “3-D Seismic Geomorphological Mapping of Clastic and Carbonate Reservoirs – The Farsund Basin, Offshore Southern Norway”, arose as a ‘side-project’ from his main project (“The role of pre-existing structure in determining the geometry and evolution of rift systems”).

Research Grants

PhD student Jonathan Rio was awarded a grant of £1,500 from the Universities' China Committee London, to help fund conservation fieldwork on the Critically Endangered wild Chinese alligator in southern Anhui Province, China.

Research Activity

From 14th Dec to 16th February PhD students Stephen Watkins, Helen Lacey, Sian Evans, Melissa Gray, Tom Phillips, Kajetan Chrapkiewicz and Tatiana Kalincheva, as well as staff members Chris Woodsford and Jason Hoadley, and project leaders Rebecca Bell, Jo Morgan and Mike Warner have been in New Zealand taking part in the 'NZ3D' seismic acquisition project funded by NERC and assisted by staff from SeisUK. Along with staff and students from the University of Cardiff, University of Southampton, and GNS Science and the University of Victoria, the ESE team successfully installed and serviced 195 seismometers in the Gisborne area of North Island, New Zealand. The seismometers were deployed in a dense array and will detect acoustic waves produced by the US ship the Marcus Langseth which collected a 3D seismic reflection dataset offshore in January. The data will be used to produce high-resolution velocity models of the Hikurangi subduction margin in an area where slow slip occurs. 50 of the SeisUK broadband seismometers will be deployed until October to detect earthquakes and microseismicity. Becky will be joining an International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) expedition in March-May, returning to the Gisborne area to investigate the Hikurangi subduction margin using scientific drilling. For more information on these projects please visit www.nz3dfwi.weebly.com/ and www.iodp.tamu.edu.

Workshops and Courses

Chris Jackson was an invited panelist for “The turning tide: A new culture of research metrics” workshop, convened by UK Universities ‘UK Forum for Responsible Research Metrics’ and supported by HEFCE (8^th February 2018). Over the last 5 years the use, and abuse, of metrics in research assessment has been in sharp focus, with three major contributions – the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) (which Imperial College signed in 2017, and the principals of which are currently being implemented across the full range of Imperial College’s hiring and promotion processes; see here and here), the Leiden Manifesto and the Metric Tide – all calling for a step change in the culture of metrics use. This workshop brought together stakeholders from across the Higher Education sector to explore the emerging culture of responsible metrics in research, and to identify and share good practice and practical advice for the sector. If you wish to discuss any issues arising from this workshop, particularly as pertains to REF2012, please do not hesitate to contact Chris.

Impact and Media

Media coverage on the research done by Jonathan Tennant, Alessandro Chiarenza and Matthew Baron in their paper: "How has our knowledge of dinosaur diversity through geologic time changed through research history?"

https://www.cnet.com/news/dinosaurs-fossils-science-decade/

Fieldwork

On 2-5 February MSc Metals and Energy Finance students braved the winter weather to visit the Wessex basin with Peter Fitch and PhD student Amelia Davies. The students visited outcrops along the coast from Orcombe Rocks, Exmouth to Kimmeridge Bay. The field trip, a first for many in the group, was a great success, students improving their geological field skills and understanding of petroleum systems. The group was blessed with the best weather in three years the sun shining on many outcrops allowing them to return with high spirits for the week ahead. Photographs are courtesy of Husam Al Hasan.