The InterPore Elections will be held from 1 – 30 November 2022.
All current InterPore members are eligible to vote. If you are a member, expect an email from MyDirectVote.net on November 1 which includes a personalized link to our voting platform. There you will be able to elect a new President-Elect, four Council members and four members of the Student Affairs Committee (SAC).
To prevent the email from landing in spam, please add noreply@directvote.net as an approved sender in your email.
InterPore promotes diversity, equality and balance! The nominated candidates include persons from industry and academia, from different topics of porous media research, from different continents and cultures, different genders, different ages and so forth. It is the mission of InterPore to be a world-wide forum for porous media research across all involved topics, and we are committed to be a diverse, balanced and fair Society. The link between academia and industry is one of the important characteristics of InterPore. Therefore, please consider to vote for at least one candidate from the industry. When making your choices, please consider these aspects to support the mission of the Society!
The candidates standing for election are listed below.
President-elect
Lilit Yeghiazarian
University of Cincinnati (USA)
Dr. Yeghiazarian is a Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Cincinnati. She holds a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Yerevan Polytechnic Institute, and M.S. in industrial engineering from the American University of Armenia. Dr. Yeghiazarian obtained her Ph.D. from Cornell’s Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering for her work on microbial dynamics in complex environmental systems.
Lilit’s research portfolio covers complex social-environmental-technological systems, sustainability and porous media. She is particularly interested in exploring the structure-property relationship in multifunctional porous materials such as soft matter and asymmetric membranes that span a wide range of porosity. Within the complete cycle of “desired properties-design-synthesis-manufacturing”, her current focus is on stochastic algorithms to design asymmetric materials with target properties. She co-edited a special issue on Thin Porous Media in Transport In Porous Media.
Over the last decade, Lilit held multiple leaderships positions in Interpore. She chaired the Local Organizing Committee of the InterPore Conference and Annual Meeting in Cincinnati OH in 2016, and, more recently she led the Membership Committee to grow and diversify the InterPore membership. She is a founding member of the MidWestern Chapter.
Lilit is a recipient of numerous awards and grants, including the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award from NSF, the Ruth Kirschstein award from NIH, and the InterPore Rosette Award from InterPore. She directs the Urban Flooding Open Knowledge Network Center funded by the NSF Convergence Accelerator.
Vahid Niasar
University of Manchester, UK
Prof Dr Vahid Niasar is the professor and chair of Subsurface Engineering and Porous Media Physics at the department of chemical engineering, University of Manchester, UK. He is also the deputy head of research at school of engineering. Additionally he launched and directs the recently established MSc Programme, Subsurface Energy Engineering at the University of Manchester. He joined the University of Manchester in 2014, after 3 years of industrial experience at Shell.
Vahid has a wide range of interests in porous media fundamental and applied research from computational and experimental pore-scale physics of multiphase flow and transport in porous media to applications such as CCS and underground energy storage, soil and agriculture, enhanced oil recovery, PEM fuel cells and redox flow batteries. He has more than 80 peer-reviewed journal publications all in Q1 journals with notable ones in PNAS, Science Advances, Nature Scientific Reports, Water Resources Research, Chemical Engineering Journal, Environmental Science and Technology (h-index:30 with more than 3500 citations, Google scholar).
Vahid has been an active member of InterPore since its establishment. In 2015 he established the UK Chapter of InterPore and in 2019 and 2021 he was elected as the Council Chair of InterPore. In his capacity as the Council Chair, he led the introduction and development of Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness amendment of the InterPore bylaw, improving the annual reports of the executive committee, establishment of ombudsperson and complaint procedure, developing key responsibility officers within the InterPore Council.
Council
Monica Riva
Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy – standing for re-election
Monica Riva is a scientific leader of the multidisciplinary research group Mi-Pore devoted to the study of qualitative and quantitative aspects of groundwater systems and underground energy resources. Her research activity has been focused mainly on subsurface flow and transport dynamics, stochastic groundwater hydrology, probabilistic well protection zones, scaling in hydrology and model parameter estimation, uncertainty quantification, multiphase flows and groundwater management. She developed and applied innovative stochastic and upscaling techniques to study flow features of immiscible and miscible fluids. She has developed a theory (based on the concept sub-Gaussian mixtures) able to capture the (typically non-Gaussian) scaling behavior exhibited by many hydrological-hydrogeological-environmental variables. She published more than 100 papers in in refereed journals. She has recently coordinated the European Water JPI project “WatEr NEEDs, Availability, Quality and Sustainability”. She is currently Rector’s delegate for International Networks at the Politecnico di Milano.
Peyman Mostaghimi
University of New South Wales, Australia – standing for relection
Peyman Mostaghimi is an Associate Professor in Minerals and Energy Resources at the University of New South Wales (UNSW Australia), where he leads a multidisciplinary research group on Multiscale Transport in Porous Systems (MUTRIS). He joined UNSW in 2014. Prior to this, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College London, where he conducted research on multiphase flow and transport in porous media. He obtained his PhD from Imperial College London and holds an MSc in Mechanical Engineering with speciality in Fluid Mechanics and dual BSc degrees in Mechanical and Petroleum Engineering from Sharif University of Technology. His research is focused on porous materials characterisation, fluid dynamics and transport phenomena in porous media with application to geological fluid storage, subsurface hydrology, minerals and hydrocarbon recovery.
Hongkyu Yoon
Sandia National Laboratories, NM, USA
Dr. Hongkyu Yoon is a principal member of technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories, NM, USA. He obtained a Ph.D degree in Environmental Engineering in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2005. After working as a research scientist at Illinois, he joined Sandia in 2010 and his research focuses on scientific machine learning development and applications for carbon management and renewable energy storage, multiphase flow and pore-scale reactive transport, chemo-mechanical coupling, and high-fidelity inverse modeling and uncertainty quantification. He received an Early Career Research Award from Sandia National Lab in 2014. Recently he has been actively leading research projects on machine/deep learning development and applications for subsurface energy recovery, carbon storage, and remote sensing data analysis for greenhouse gas emissions in multiple Sandia and US DOE Carbon management and Climate Change Security programs. He has organized and participated machine learning sessions and workshops for Earth Science application and also organized the machine learning session in the annual InterPore conferences over the past years.
Moran Wang
Tsingua University, China
Dr. Moran Wang is a Professor of Fluid Mechanics and Thermophysics at the Department of Engineering Mechanics of Tsinghua University. Before joining the current position, he worked at Johns Hopkins University (2004-2006) and University of California (2006-2008) as a postdoctoral fellow, and at Los Alamos National Laboratory of USA (2008-2011) as an Oppenheimer Fellow. After joining the current position, Dr. Wang has established the Multiscale Interfacial Transport (MIT) Laboratory at Tsinghua. He was also appointed as visiting professor at Princeton University (2018-2019) during his sabbatical leave. Dr. Wang is serving as a member of International Chapter Committee and Honor/Award Committee of Interpore, and the vice chair of Interpore China. His main research interests are analytical, numerical and experimental methods for micro/nanoscale transport in porous media, multiphysicochemical interfacial process and multiscale modeling for diverse natural and engineering applications. Dr. Wang has published around 200 peer-reviewed publications (over 8000 citations with H-index=44 from ISI; over 11000 citations with H-index=53 from Google).
Zuleima T. Karpyn
The Pennsylvania State University, USA
Dr. Zuleima Karpyn is Associate Dean for Graduate Education and Research, and Donohue Family Professor of Energy and Mineral Engineering, in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at The Pennsylvania State University. Karpyn specializes in multiphase flow and transport in porous media, and digital rock physics. Her research studies the interactions between rocks and fluids and how they affect storage, trapping and displacement of gases and liquids in the subsurface. Areas of application include reservoir characterization and engineering, carbon sequestration and environmental remediation. Karpyn holds a B.S. in chemical engineering from Universidad Central de Venezuela, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in petroleum and natural gas engineering from The Pennsylvania State University. Karpyn is a recipient of the 2008 Faculty Early CAREER Development Award granted by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the 2010 Wilson Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2016 Fulbright U.S. Scholar, 2018-2019 Big10 (BTAA) Academic Leadership Fellow, and Energi Simulation Chair in Fluid Behavior and Rock Interactions (2014-2020). She has also served as Associate Editor of the Society of Petroleum Engineers Journal (2009-2014), Assistant Editor-in-chief of the Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering (2014-2017), Associate Editor of Transport in Porous Media (2018-present), and Deputy Editor of Geoenergy (2022-present).
Marie Elisabeth Rognes
Simula Research Laboratory, Norway
Marie E. Rognes is Chief Research Scientist in Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing at Simula Research Laboratory, Oslo, Norway and a 2022/2023 Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of California San Diego.
Rognes joined Simula in 2009, after having received her Ph.D from the Centre for Mathematics for Applications at the University of Oslo in the same year. She led Simula’s Department for Biomedical Computing from 2012-2016, and currently leads a number of research projects focusing on mathematical and computational brain science, including an ERC Starting Grant in Mathematics (2017-2023). She won the 2015 Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software, the 2018 Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters Prize for Young Researchers within the Natural Sciences, is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences, and a member of the FEniCS Steering Council.
Dominik Obrist
University of Bern, Switzerland
Dominik Obrist is Professor for Cardiovascular Engineering at the ARTORG Center for Biomedical Engineering Research of the University of Bern. He holds a degree in mechanical engineering from ETH Zurich and earned his doctoral degree in 2000 at the Department of Applied Mathematics of the University of Washington (Seattle, USA). From 2000 to 2005, he worked in various positions for the supercomputer company Cray Inc. In 2005, Dominik Obrist returned to academia as senior researcher at the Institute of Fluid Dynamics of ETH Zurich, where he established a research group for biomedical fluid dynamics. His present research activities encompass several aspects of biomedical flow systems including the microcirculation, the respiratory system and the balance sense.
Eddy Hill
Zeiss, USA
Eddy completed a PhD in Experimental Petrology at the University of Bristol, which he followed with a move to UT to work on developing technologies and processes, for in-situ resource utilisation, with a view to building and supplying a Lunar Base. In time, he returned to more traditional research topics at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Arizona, before moving to industry to work as a Consultant. In 2012, he joined ZEISS with a remit to develop automated analytical solutions for the Natural Resources industries (O&G, Mining, and Geoscience).
Student Affairs Committee
Jian Wu
University of Sydney, Australia
Antonio is a PhD candidate in the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Sydney, Australia. Before traveling across the equator, he obtained a MASc in Civil Engineering from Queen’s University, Canada and a BEng from Wuhan University of Technology, China. He has conducted interdisciplinary and collaborative research at Central South University, National Engineering Laboratory for Site Remediation Technologies, and Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics (Chinese Academy of Science) in China during the past years. Besides English, he is native in mandarin and proficient in French and Spanish. He is interested in gas flow and transport in porous media with experience in both laboratory visualization experiments and numerical simulations. His current work is focused on nano/micro-scale CO2-CH4 displacement and interaction in shale reservoirs in the context of CO2-EGR while achieving CO2 sequestration in the meantime. He has published several peer-reviewed research papers in Fuel, Journal of Environmental Management, and International Journal of Coal Geology. He is an active member of many academic societies such as InterPore, AGU, and ANAGRAM. He presented research work at national and international conferences and was awarded the prestigious Outstanding Student Presentation Award (OSPA) by AGU in 2019 for his quality research and communication skills.
Ramin Moghadasi
Uppsala University, Sweden & Imperial College London, UK
I am a final year PhD student in Hydrogeology at Uppsala University and a graduate in Petroleum Engineering. My PhD study involves the study of Residual Trapping in Geological CO2 Storage (or CCS, one of the key methods in combatting CO2 emissions to the atmosphere) Over a Range of Scales Using Modeling and Experiments. I began my work by analysing the field data from our deep CO2 injection experiments in Heletz, Israel, one of the few field experiments of its kind in the world. In my work, I came up with a new hypothesis for some of the key phenomena observed in the field, namely the role of critical saturation. The data analysis and modeling in my work demonstrated that the hypothesis indeed was correct. The results were found to be of significant importance with various implications, and already been published in IJGHGC and presented in several international conferences. This work was then granted a separate prestigious scholarship at Uppsala University, which provided me the opportunity to join Imperial College London as a visiting PhD student, From January to July 2022 for 6 months, to carry out cutting edge experiments and modelling at the pore-scale. My hope is to apply the results of my PhD project to investigate both the short- and long-term safety and stability of residual trapping over a wide range of scales in geological CO2 storage. For the next 3 years, I will be joining the University of Gothenburg, Sweden where I will be working on Groundwater contamination by Plastic and Pesticides in Agricultural Soils.
Chiara Recalcati
Politecnico di Milano, Italy
I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Politecnico di Milano (Italy). I hold a Msc in Civil Engineering (graduated in 2020). I am currently at the beginning of the third year of my PhD path in the Doctoral programme of Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering. My research activity is keyed towards the characterization of (geochemical) surface processes taking place during dissolution/precipitation reactions at the interface between natural porous media and fluids. In this context, I am performing laboratory-scale experimental activities as well as theoretical/modeling analyses and characterization of the observed processes. Laboratory experiments are performed at the micro-scale, taking advantage of modern microscopy features offered by the use of Atomic Force Microscopy imaging. Modeling is based on a stochastic theoretical framework inspired to geostatistics.
In Politecnico di Milano, I am involved in tutoring and teaching assistance activities associated with the courses of Fluid Mechanics and Groundwater. I am also actively engaged in the Department life, where I serve as elected representative of the PhD candidates in the Council of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Mohammad Masoudi
University of Oslo, Norway
I recently started a postdoc at the University of Oslo where I have done my PhD. I have been studying fluid flow in porous media for from 2016. I am interested in reactive transport, fluid-rock interactions, CO2 and H2 storage, cooking, and football. In my postdoc I study the fluid-rock interactions during underground H2 storage. My PhD was about the near wellbore processes during CO2 storage where I studied a wide variety of phenomena that can cause injectivity impairment. I strongly believe that science offers the best solution to all of our problems. As it helped us to get through COVID19, it will help us to deal with bigger challenges, such as climate change. Here, knowledge sharing is key, and communities like InterPore play a big role in this process. That is why I am interested in serving on InterPore’s Students Affairs Committee. My goal is to expand our network and make the knowledge of InterPore society more accessible.
Saeed Harati
Teesside University, UK
Saeed is a PhD student in Geo-energy Engineering at Teesside University. He obtained his BSc and MSc degrees in Hydrocarbon Reservoir Engineering from the Science and Research branch of Tehran Azad University in 2016 and 2019, respectively. His research in the field of porous media was started early during his undergraduate course with an investigation on formation damage remediation through acidizing techniques. Then later during his MSc course, he developed his research into cutting-edge lab experiments on nanoparticles transport and retention in porous media, and foam flooding stabilization using nanomaterials for chemical enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Upon his MSc graduation, he became a research associate in the Petroleum and Chemical Engineering lab at his university, participating in a joint industrial project on improving the rheological and filtration properties of drilling fluids using nanomaterials. Following this in early 2021, he started his PhD course at Teesside University.
Working at the interface between science and engineering, Saeed’s research is presently focused on hydrogen’s flow characteristics and bio-geochemical reactivity in porous geologic formations. More specifically, he is using experimental (high temperature/pressure batch experiments) and computational (coupled reactive transport modeling) approaches to track combined microbial-geochemical induced reactions in hydrogen-rock-brine systems, hoping to make a worthwhile contribution to facilitating the deployment of large-scale geological hydrogen storage in near future. He is eager to take part in NetZero activities and put classic energy solutions to more sustainable uses. Besides research, Saeed is an avid instructor too. He is a special lecturer in the School of Computing, Engineering, and Digital Technologies at Teesside University and has been engaged in leading and advising a number of MSc research students as well. He is also the vice-president of the European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers (EAGE) student chapter at Teesside University and is constantly involved in student activities. He hopes that his flair for porous media studies, together with his vision and his professional background could enable him to play an effective role in further success and prolificacy of the Interpore society and encourage his peers and early-career researchers to accept new challenges on their path to success.
Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
Soheil Safari Anarkouli is a Ph.D. student in hydrogeology at Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic. He graduated with a master’s degree in mechanical engineering with specialization in fluid mechanics from Khajeh Nasir Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. Before that, he obtained a B.Sc. in mechanical engineering from University of Guilan, Rasht, Iran. He has always been interested in research on fluid flow in porous media. Therefore, his enthusiasm and relevant experience inspired him to take up an interdisciplinary Ph.D. project on numerical and experimental investigation of compaction effects on pore structure and soil hydraulic properties utilizing non- Newtonian fluids. During his university years, he was an active member of the student associations, organizing scientific seminars, workshops and conferences.
His primary interests include pore-scale modeling, saturated porous media and non-Newtonian fluids. He presented his research results at InterPore, EGU and AGU conferences. He is in touch with advanced professionals by attending conferences, online talks and courses. Considering InterPore as a dynamic professional community, he hopes to have a mutually beneficial association with the team towards meeting their goals.
Carlos Felipe Silva Escalante
National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico
Carlos Felipe is Petroleum Engineer by Veracruzana University (UV), and he obtained degrees of M.Eng. in Reservoir Engineering by National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and M. in Regulation and Economics of Petroleum Industry by University Studies Institute (IEU). Currently, he is graduated student as M.Sc. Hydrocarbon Administration at National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) and PhD. Student of Reservoir Engineering at UNAM. All his studies have been performed in Mexico. His research has been focused on Simulation and Analysis of Unconventional Reservoirs Development with Fractals properties, Profitability Analysis and Economics of Development of Unconventional Reservoirs. He has been external consultant in public institutions and universities where has imparted several conferences and has participated as reviewing referee of technical papers published at national journals in Mexico. His current research is focused waterless hydraulic fracturing in shale reservoirs with the use of anthropogenic carbon dioxide from fixes sources to counter and avoid the water usage and affectations of water natural sources on the development of unconventional shale reservoirs in Mexico. Carlos Felipe is a young professional with the goal of motivate and support energy and geoscience students via knowledge interchange and instruct to young students though technical research and academic activities.