Dear InterPore Friends,

The InterPore2021 has finished. Well, not really, as all talks and posters are still available
online. I think it was a great success. Some occasional technical issues occurred, but that is the
same with in-person conferences, right? A frozen laptop or failing projector. And all issues were
quickly solved by magnificent technical support.

More important, social interaction and networking worked quite well. The poster+ sessions were
excellent meeting grounds, as well as the SAC network events. And how about an “InterPore got-talent
show” next year?

This newsletter starts with a message from our new president Michel Quintard. Furthermore, we’ve got
awards, the InterPore Young Academy, science, jobs, art exhibition, a call for free access to
facilities, courses, council meetings…. time to scroll down and enjoy reading!

All the best,

Matthijs de Winter
Editor-in-Chief
InterPore News

Message from InterPore’s New President

Dear InterPore Colleagues,

It is a great honor to become president of InterPore after a series of such outstanding presidents.
If InterPore is to be a very active and thriving society, this cannot, of course, be the job of a
single person! InterPore successfully and remarkably made it through very challenging times due to
the pandemic crisis, no doubt thanks to numerous contributors and a very dedicated staff.

The difficulties of the period were indeed noticeable, but brilliant ideas and the commitment of many
created a new and successful ecosystem for online InterPore Conferences. InterPore2020 and, more,
InterPore2021 were indisputable successes. We now have the savoir-faire to move further. We are
ready to organize hybrid-conferences and we have the technology to multiply other types of InterPore
events. During this period, new and promising initiatives were also undertaken. The creation of the
InterPore Academy is a good example, with an already furnished portfolio of short courses, webinars,
the tea-time-talks and the Young Academy, …! New chapters, new awards, the WikiPore project, the
Album of Porous Media Structure and Dynamics, …: initiatives have flourished!

As new president, I will first of all act to reinforce all these outstanding initiatives. I also
believe that the potential for InterPore development is very high. New chapters were established in
the last period and kickoff meetings are in preparation. A chapter committee was created to
coordinate initiatives and foster cooperation. The dynamics are there! However, it will not have
escaped your attention that InterPore has, so far, little impact in Africa. There is an important
porous media community in Africa and, naturally, InterPore should be their scientific society. This
is one of the great objectives of the coming period to which I am deeply committed. Proposals will
come soon to achieve this goal with the help of InterPore, InterPore Foundation, and, above all,
you! Please, send us your suggestions, proposals, and names of potentially interested persons.

Finally, my last wish for the coming period would be this: let us hope that the Covid-19 crisis is
finally over and that we can all meet again at the InterPore2022 conference in Qingdao!

Best regards,

Michel Quintard

Council Meeting: results and outlook

On 03 June 2021, during InterPore2021, InterPore Council met in its new composition.
During this meeting, the council members re-elected Vahid Niasar as chair of the Council, Azita
Ahmadi as treasurer, and Majid Hassanizadeh as managing director. Congratulations!

Message from the chair of InterPore Council, Vahid Niasar:

I feel honoured and proud of being re-elected as the Council Chair for another term
(2021-2023) by InterPore Council members.

I would like to sincerely thank the InterPore members and Council members for their trust and
support. In the last two years, in addition to the operational duties of the Council, we
reviewed and revised the by-laws, developed the Diversity, Equality and Inclusiveness (DEI)
and defined the role of the ombudsperson to address potential complaints raised by InterPore
members.

In the coming two years, we will focus on the further development of indicators, procedures
and protocols to support and monitor the operational performance and strategic objectives of
InterPore. This will help the Society to secure scientific excellence, inclusiveness,
transparency, and a healthy environment for communication and knowledge exchange.

InterPore Academy Short Course: OpenFOAM

The next InterPore Academy short course focuses on OpenFOAM® (www.openfoam.com). In less than a decade, OpenFOAM has
become a major simulation platform for research related to flow and transport in porous media at
various scales of interest. This short course aims at discovering this simulation platform through a
series of lectures and live demonstrations. The course is taught by Dr. Cyprien Soulaine, who is an
Associate Scientist at CNRS, the French National Centre for Scientific Research, working at the
Institute of Earth Sciences of Orléans and using OpenFOAM since 2009 for his own research. He has
delivered OpenFOAM® training classes to more than a hundred students, researchers, and engineers
both in academia and industry.

This short course has limited capacity of 30 attendees. Click
here to register.

Title: Introduction to open-source computational fluid dynamics using OpenFOAM®
technology: Simulation in porous media from pore- to reservoir- scale

Speaker: Dr. Cyprien Soulaine, Associate Scientist at CNRS, The French National
Centre for Scientific Research

Date: 14-18 June 2021, 5 daily sessions of 2:20h each (from 3:40pm to 6:00pm CEST)

Registration fee:

Click here
for more information and registration.

Please click here for more details
and information on the webinars.

The InterPore Academy for Porous Media is a new unit to promote educational activities, mainly to
serve younger researchers, with a range of short courses, webinars, and workshops. See the website for further information.

InterPore Young Academy

A short introduction of the InterPore Young Academy can be found here on their YouTube channel.

National
Chapter Award

The National Chapter Award 2021 has been awarded to the Mexican National Chapter. InterPore
recognizes their organizational structure, their very active annual meetings and their plans to
organize a future InterPore conference. The Mexican Chapter was the second chapter to be formed
(after the Netherlands) back in 2013, remaining active and expanding throughout.

Thank you all for your great efforts in promoting porous media research in Mexico and for forming a
pillar for InterPore in North America.

InterPore2021 Leaderboard Contest Winners

Participants in the leaderboard contest earned points by interacting with the porous media community
during InterPore2021 through the community boards and group discussions. We’re delighted to announce
the winners:

• 1st place with free registration to InterPore2022 – Lotanna Ohazuruike

• 2nd place with 75% off InterPore2022 registration – Saeid Sadeghnejad

• 3rd place with 50% off InterPore2022 registration – Hassan Mahani

Congratulations to our winners and many thanks to all participants at InterPore2021 for their
engagement and activity during the online conference.

MDPI Energies Student Poster Award

The MDPI Energies Student Poster Award
has been presented to two students at InterPore2021: Maxime van der Heijden (Technical University of
Eindhoven, the Netherlands) and Pedro Pampillón (Universidad Politechnica de Madrid). The MDPI
Energies Student Poster Award is given in recognition of outstanding student poster presentations at
the annual InterPore conference. The Honors and Awards Committee choose the best student poster
presentations, and the price winners receive an honorable mention during the conference and a prize
of €500.

Congratulations to Maxime and Pedro!

Call for free access to EPOS-NL
research facilities

A 2nd call is open from 9 June to 16 July to get
free-of-charge access to top EPOS-NL research facilities in the
Netherlands, notably:

• The ESL High Pressure and Temperature Lab at Utrecht University
• The ESL Tectonic modelling lab at Utrecht University
• The CT scanners of the Multi-scale Imaging and Tomography (MINT) facility at Delft University of
  Technology
• The Petrophysics Lab at Delft University of Technology

Capabilities include CT scanning, triaxial compression testing, ring shear (friction) testing and
analogue modelling of tectonic processes.

Access can be remote (send in sample analysis) or physical (personal visit), depending on
developments in Covid restrictions, the requirements of the facility to be accessed and/or your
wishes. Click here for more information.

If you want to stay up to date on EPOS-NL facility and data access, e-mail “subscribe” to info@epos-nl.nl.

We are happy to invite you to our next Porous Media Tea Time Talks (#PorousMediaTTT) session
at 15 June at 15:00 CEST local
time on our YouTube
Channel.

The goal of the Porous Media TTT is to act as a complimentary platform to the already very successful
Geoscience and Geoenergy
webinars with the focus placed on young professionals.

We are very much looking forward to seeing you online!

Maja Rücker, Mohammad Nooraiepour, Catherine Spurin, Marcel Moura, Kamaljit Singh, Arjen Mascini,
Nara Brandão Costa Santos, Javier Santos

Science is art, art is science

Welcome to PoreLab virtual gallery exhibition!

The virtual exhibition by PoreLab (“The
Art of Porous Media”) in Norway was announced in November last year. It is still open. As
the COVID-19 pandemic numbers on Norway are very good, a physical exhibition has been organized in
front of the town hall of the capital city Oslo. It is a fine example of engaging with the public.
Please visit the PoreLab
website for more information and images.

Computationally Efficient Multiscale Neural Networks Applied to Fluid Flow in Complex 3D Porous
Media

Javier E. Santos, Ying Yin, Honggeun Jo, Wen Pan, Qinjun Kang, Hari S. Viswanathan, Maša
Prodanović, Michael J. Pyrcz & Nicholas Lubbers

The permeability of a sample can be obtained via direct flow simulation, which provides the most
accurate results, but is very computationally expensive. Machine learning approaches have shown
great promise for building models by virtue of accounting for the spatial arrangement of the
domains’ solid boundaries. However, prior approaches building on the ML literature concerning 2D
image recognition problems do not scale well to the large 3D domains required to obtain an REV. In
this work, we address this limitation with a general multiscale deep learning model that is able to
learn from porous media simulation data. Our model enables the evaluation of large (5123) images in
approximately one second on a single graphics processing unit. This model is a general framework for
a wide variety of physical phenomena. Please feel free to contact me if you would like to try it
out.

Transport in Porous Media
2021
Corresponding Author: Javier E.
Santos

InterPore Members, do you want to promote your publication to the community? If so, please submit
your highlight to newsletter@InterPore.org.
Clearly indicate which of the authors is an InterPore member (or the institute with an
Institutional Membership). Note that we will not review the entries nor does
InterPore endorse the published work. Furthermore, we publish on a “submitted first, published
first” basis. The highlighted publication should be no older than 6 months (available
online).

The highlight should be short (max 100 words) and contain an illustration.
Please note that we offer this opportunity exclusively to InterPore members. If you would like
to become a member, please have a look here.

• Research
  Assistant / PhD student, Numerical analysis of transport processes of radionuclides in
  fractured rocks using tomography datasets, Institute of Resource Ecology, Reactive Transport
  Department (member of HZDR), Leipzig, Germany

If you have a job opening in your institute and would like to promote it internationally, please
send the description and weblink or PDF to newsletter@interpore.org, and we’ll be happy to
add it to the list.