ESE April Newsletter

Department of Earth Science and Engineering

An overview of the recent publications, events and exciting work that is happening in the Department of Earth Science and Engineering.

Content

Publications
Conference Talks and Lecture
Awards
Research Activity
Workshops and Courses
Impact and Media
Outreach
New Staff

Publications

Furness, E. N., Garwood, R. J., Mannion, P. D. & Sutton, M. D. (2021). Evolutionary simulations clarify and reconcile biodiversity-disturbance models. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 288: 20210240.

Scaravaglione, G., Latham, J.P., Xiang, J. (2021). Numerical model study of Prototype Drop Tests on Cube and Cubipod® Concrete Armour Units Using the Combined Finite?discrete Element Method. J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 9, 460.

Schilling K., Moore, R. E. T., Sullivan, K. V., Capper, M. S., Rehkämper, M., Goddard, K., Ion, C., Coombes, R. C., Vesty-Edwards, L., Lamb, A. D., Halliday, A. N., Larner, F. (2021) Zinc stable isotopes in urine as diagnostic for cancer of secretory organs. Metallomics, 2021; mfab020.

Conference Talks and Lecture

In April, Ian Bastow gave a lecture to the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society. In his talk, he discussed how the study of rifting and geophysical fieldwork in Ethiopia and Kenya have progressed since the late 19th century, when explorers like John Gregory embarked on the first studies of the East African Rift.

Members of the Department of Earth Science and Engineering were part of the virtual European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly 2021 that held from 19 to 30 April. See some participants below:

Polteau, S., Huq, F., Smalley, P.C., Yarushina, V., Johansen, I., Schöpke, C., Øvrebø, L., and Hartz, E.: Characterization of Fluid Connectivity in Reservoirs using Strontium Isotopes, EGU21-12191, 2021.

Conor O'Malley chaired a session in the Geomorphology section entitled "Investigating deep-Earth dynamics through time and space using surface observations". Conor and Victoria Fernandes were among the presenters in the session. The conference material is available to view until the end of May.

On 29 April, LODE PhD student Chetan Nathwani presented a lightning talk on his work on zircon and wholerock petrology in the Quellaveco porphyry-Cu district, Peru.

Awards

Robert Bird has won the 2020 Roger Owen Award for the best PhD thesis in computational mechanics. He was awarded by the UK Association for Computational Mechanics (UKACM), for his thesis entitled "An hp-adaptive discontinuous Galerkin finite element method for accurate configurational force brittle crack propagation", which was completed at Durham University. This means that Robert will be a runner for the European Community on Computational Methods in Applied Sciences PhD thesis competition. His thesis is available online on the award website.
Robert is currently a Post-Doctoral Researcher (PDRA) in the Rock Mechanics Group, working with Dr Adriana Paluszny and Professor Robert Zimmerman.

Research Activity

JP Latham and Jason Xiang presented talks at the recent Code Developers Workshop for the Collaborative Computational Project in Wave Structure Interaction (CCP-WSI) held on the 7 - 8 April. The CCP-WSI is funded by EPSRC and brings together two computational communities – fluid dynamics and structural mechanics.

Workshops and Courses

LODE PhD student Ethan Tonks participated in the Seequent Leapfrog Geo Fundamentals; University of Nevada, Las Vegas SEG Student Chapter Epithermal Short Course on Saturday 24 April.

Impact and Media

Paulina Quintanilla, from the Advanced Mineral Processing Research Group, has become an ambassador of the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI). Her interview is available online.

Dr Matt Genge and Dr Mark Sutton's development of undergraduate virtual field teaching is featured in an Atlas Obscura article "Using Video Game Tech to Teach Field-Starved Geology Students".

Outreach

LODE PhD student Tom Matthews participated in the Natural History Museum's (NHM) Nature Live programme on Tuesday 20 April, discussing metals and mining for a green future. The event featured questions from members of the public and was streamed live on the NHM's Facebook and YouTube channels.

New Staff

Navjot Kukreja started as a Teaching Fellow on 29 March

Rhodri Nelson started as a Teaching Fellow on 1 March

Marijan Beg started as a Teaching Fellow on 4 May

Meissam Bahlali started as a Research Associate with Professor Matthew Jackson on 1 March

Dan Sun started as a Research Associate with Professor Peter King on 20 April

Nicholas Arnold started as a Research Assistant with Dr Philippa Mason on 3 May