Dear InterPore friends,

Last chance to vote, as the polls close at 30 November. Why voting? Well, for example our current president
Laura Pyrak-Nolte represented us, the porous media community, at the very large University Alliance of the
Silk Route events, as you can read below. You can choose which of the two capable candidates will do that in a
few years from now.

Also new council members will be elected, an important body of our society. They have introduced an important
article in our bylaws: Article 9. Diversity, Equality, Inclusiveness (see below). Every human being
counts. As a Society, we should stick to such simple but nevertheless high virtues.

Youth is the future, so the Student Affairs Committee vote is crucial. Who knows, some may also become AGU
award winners, like some other (slightly less young) InterPore members. Time will tell!

Happy reading!

Matthijs de Winter
Editor-in-Chief
InterPore News

How it works

Eligible voters should have received emails with their login information and details. These emails have been
sent by the InterPore Office Team via mydirectvote.net. The subject line is “InterPore Election 2020 – vote
today”. Anyone needing additional assistance with accessing the voting platform and finding their login
credentials, please email the InterPore office.

President-Elect

You have one vote for a candidate for President-Elect, a volunteer position that last 6 years total = 2 as
President-Elect, 2 years as President and 2 years as Past-President. Among many tasks and roles, the
President-Elect oversees the operations of InterPore, plays an integral part in organizing and approving the
annual conference for InterPore, represents InterPore at other conferences and in other organizations.

This year’s candidates for President-Elect are:

Council Members

You have five votes for Council Members, a volunteer position that lasts 4 years. Candidate information is
found on the ballot and can also be found on the InterPore website.
The importance of
Council Members is demonstrated by the Council objectives:

• To facilitate collaboration among industrial and academic researchers
• To bring together porous media theoreticians, modellers and experimentalists from academia and industry
• To provide a forum for exchanging ideas and expertise for the improvement of porous media models
• To identify research questions that will lead to major improvements in theories and models of complex
  porous media and to define modelling challenges
• To play a role in setting up strategic research priorities of major funding agencies at national and
  international levels
• To identify sources of funding for collaborative research among partners and to facilitate setting up
  collaborative research projects

SAC Members

You have three votes for Student
Affairs Committee Members. SAC members are responsible for the following objectives:

• Education: Support students new in the field of porous media by organizing short courses and workshops
  specifically meant to introduce the basics of porous media as well as typical experimental and analytical
  methods.
• Social: Organizing events to get to know each other and to have fun together offering room to discuss your
  own work and exchange ideas at the existing InterPore meetings and conferences.
• Career: Since InterPore is an organization including both academics and industry, we would like to blur
  the boundaries between them. We would like to offer company visits or career events where students and
  industry representatives can get in touch with each other.

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 worldwide 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 voting for at least one candidate from the industry. When making your choices,
please consider these aspects to support the mission of the Society!

PLEASE VOTE TODAY!

InterPore Bylaws Update

The InterPore Council has updated the InterPore
Bylaws (564 KB). The main difference is the addition of Article 9:

Article 9. Diversity, Equality, Inclusiveness The Society is committed to fostering,
cultivating and preserving a culture of diversity, equality and inclusiveness in the field of research and
application related to porous media, as stated in the Diversity, Equality and Inclusiveness amendment.

InterPore is currently investigating how to make sure that DEI awareness is more prominent in our society. An
elaboration on Article 9 can be found in Amendment
1_DEI (433 KB).

Linda Abriola is InterPore’s
ombudsperson. Please report any mistreatment/misconduct regarding DEI by people affiliated with InterPore to
the ombudsperson via email to ombudsperson@interpore.org. Any
formal complaint received by the ombudsperson will be examined, discussed and addressed in the Council.

AGU honors

Three InterPore members have been recently recognized by the American
Geophysical Union (AGU).

This year’s recipient of the Robert E. Horton Medal, the highest AGU
recognition in hydrological sciences, is Martinus Th. (Rien) van Genuchten. Rien is a
long-time InterPore supporter and recipient of Honorary Lifetime Membership Award in 2012.

Two AGU fellows have been elected from among our ranks: our current InterPore President Laura J.
Pyrak-Nolte, Purdue University, and Rainer Helmig, University of Stuttgart. Rainer
is co-founder of InterPore and recipient of Honorary Lifetime Membership Award in 2019.

Join us in congratulating them on their well-deserved recognition.

Philippe Coussot in JNNFM seminar series

InterPore member Philippe Coussot will be giving a seminar within the framework of the JNNFM seminar series entitled
Progress in rheology and hydrodynamics allowed by NMR or MRI techniques of which half will
focus on original applications in porous media.

Abstract
In modern fluid mechanics it has become common to attempt to observe internal
flow
characteristics even in non-transparent materials. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) offers a wide range of
possibilities of non-destructive measurements inside such materials. Indeed, by exciting differently different
areas (which leads to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)), NMR allows to get various information on the physical
characteristics of the system at a local scale, such as the liquid content and the displacement or velocity of
the liquid molecules, through local or statistical measurements. This presentation will start by a brief
overview of the basic technical elements allowing to understand the principles of the technique, its
versatility to measure various flow and material characteristics, and the technical difficulties (and costs)
inherent to this technique. We will then review applications of NMR in complex flows, rheology of complex
fluids, flow in porous media, colloid transport, and fluid transfers in complex porous systems.

9 December, 18:00 CEST
Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics
Complex Fluids Seminar Series

InterPore presence at UASR

InterPore president Prof. Laura Pyrak-Nolte gave a keynote
lecture (5.39 MB) at the University
Alliance of the Silk Road (UASR) event (2.43 MB) on 23 November. The UASR is a non-governmental and non-profit organization
encompassing more than 150 universities worldwide and dedicated to inclusiveness and international cooperation
in higher education. The event has been jointly organized by Politecnico
di Milano (which is also an InterPore Institutional Member) and Xi’an Jiaotong University.

Porous media were in the spotlight of the UASR President Forum and have been at the core of a session
organized and chaired by one of our council members, Prof. Monica Riva. Our President emphasized the essential
role and services of porous media to our security. From face masks to filters to batteries and subsurface
materials, all kinds porous media are key to our life, health and prosperity. A video recording of her talk
will be uploaded to the InterPore website in due time.

How bound water regulates
wood drying

Hélène Penvern, Meng Zhou, Benjamin Maillet, Denis Courtier-Murias, Mario Scheel, Jonathan Perrin, Timm
Weitkamp, Sandrine Bardet, Sabine Caré, Philippe Coussot

Water extraction from plants by evaporation is ubiquitous in nature, and essential for most uses of
wood-based products, yet little is known about the internal drying mechanisms. NMR and x-ray computed
tomography were used to observe the effects of drying at different length scales. In typical porous media
drying is due mainly to capillary effects, but in wood the structure’s bound water controls extraction of free
liquid from pores, throughout the process. Transfers between bound and free water seem to play a major role in
the interaction of plantlike systems with water, and this study provides new concepts for modeling and
controlling the drying properties of such materials.

Physical Review
Applied 14, 054051
Corresponding Authors: Philippe Coussot

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should be no older than 6 months (available online).

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please have a look here.

• Postdoc
  position, Tracer transport and multiphase flows in and across porous media, Royal Institute of Technology
  (KTH), Sweden