Dear InterPore colleagues,

It is great to see national Chapter meetings being held. I can imagine that it is great to meet again in person! Along that line, how many new people did you meet in the last two years only via online meetings? It is a very interesting experience to meet these people in real life as well. Everybody has more or less the same height behind a webcam, and you’d typically stare right in their 2D faces all the time. But in real life, they’re short or tall, and they don’t have a name tag underneath their chin. You sometimes don’t even recognize them! Exciting dynamics in the corridors.

Anyway, please have a look through the list of items. Only one I’ll point out, which is the departure from Stephanie, who has done a great job in the background of InterPore, also related to the Newsletter. And as InterPore, we’re very fortunate with Margaret to step in and replace Stephanie.

All the best,

Matthijs de Winter
Editor-in-Chief
InterPore News

Call for MS Organizers

Minisymposia (MS) at InterPore2023 have been finalized and the Program Committee is looking to add new organizers. Interested parties should email conference2023@interpore.org by 23 September with a copy of their CV and/or ResearchGate link and the MS number(s) which they would like to help organize.

Invited Speaker at InterPore2023

Professor Eugene VOROBIEV
Université de Technologie de Compiègne, Compiègne Cedex, France

Title: Electroporation of cellular membranes for the enhancement of mass transfer in biological media: mechanism and technological applications

Eugene Vorobiev is Professor Emeritus at the Compiegne University of Technology (UTC), France. He was a full Professor of Chemical Engineering and a head of the Laboratory for Agro-Industrial Technologies of UTC from 1997 to 2021. His main research interests are focused on the solid-liquid extraction, filtration, expression, and electrically assisted separations.

Cellular membranes serve as selective barriers for regulation of molecular transport between interior and exterior of cells. Under the effect of electric field pulses, the biological membrane is electrically pierced and loses its semi-permeability temporarily or permanently. It was shown that electroporation can serve to introduce into cells or extract from cells small and/or large molecules. This lecture presents the mechanisms of cell electroporation, its impact on the physical properties of biological media, and gives examples of mass transfer enhancement in electroporated cell network.

Find all our plenary speakers here.

Changes at InterPore

For personal reasons, Stephanie Lantin has resigned from her position as a member of InterPore Office. Stef joined InterPore in 2021 and very soon assumed a critical role in running daily affairs of InterPore. This has included membership affairs, sponsor and exhibitor activities, website maintenance and IT issues, as well as the promotion and administration of InterPore events. She has always done her worked with dedication, skill, and with a big smile on her face. Her services to InterPore have been extensive and essential and for this we are deeply thankful. We wish her the best in the coming years.

InterPore relies so much on its dedicated staff; so we are glad to announce that Margaret Dieter (see her introduction in the previous Newsletter) has joined to assume Stef’s role. We warmly welcome her to the InterPore family and we all look forward to working with her.

Majid Hassanizadeh
InterPore Managing Director

After over five years of continuous service, Peter Elliker, a Senior Research Manager at Kimberly-Clark Corporation, is stepping down from the InterPore Foundation in September 2022. Peter served as vice chair of the Foundation from basically the beginning, when the Foundation Board of Directors was initially constituted. Peter was instrumental in getting the Foundation fully operational, a very critical phase for the Foundation. We thank Peter for his continuous support and dedication. InterPore is particularly grateful for Peter’s support with respect to the Kimberly-Clark Distinguished Lectureship Award, providing important direction for managing the lectureship in practice, handling the funding, ensuring support for the award by Kimberly-Clark, and ensuring its extension during the Covid years.

The InterPore Foundation Board of Directors

InterPore2024 will be held Monday, May 13, through Thursday, May 16, in Qingdao, China.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Kimberly-Clark Distinguished Lecturer 2023

The Kimberly-Clark Distinguished Lecturer 2023 is Professor Adrian Bejan from Duke University, USA. Adrian Bejan was awarded the 2018 Benjamin Franklin Medal for “his pioneering interdisciplinary contributions in thermodynamics … and constructal theory, which predicts natural design and its evolution in engineering, scientific, and social systems.” More on his impressive resumé can be found on our website.

His lecture, entitled Vascular materials: Predicting Design Evolution, will focus on one of his major contributions: evolutionary design illustrated in the case of multiscale vasculature, a methodology that can be used generally to predict the evolution toward flow access, miniaturization, high density of heat transfer, and the scaling up (or down) of an existing design. (full abstract)

How to host Adrian Bejan at your institute

Please visit our website for further information on how to apply.

Chapter News

2nd Symposium of Israel National Chapter

The symposium will take place at the Weizmann Institute of Science on 18 September 2022. All the presentations will be by students, where they can share their recent work and get feedback from their peers. Participation is free of charge.

The organization of the chapter is led by the student representative of the Israel Chapter, Dror Ettlinger from the Weizmann Institute of Science and her committee members Yanjing Wei from Tel Aviv University, Mario del Mastro from the Technion, Arnold Bacharach from the Technion, and Sayan Sen from Ben Gurion University.

More information is available on our website here and here.

5th BeNeLux chapter Meeting

The chapter meeting will be held at Hasselt University on 14 October 2022. Registration is now open.

For information on the program and speakers, please visit our website. More information about how to submit an abstract for a short presentation or a poster will follow soon.

We also have the website for our chapter meeting online (thanks to InterPore and in particular to Amy Spang), which you can find here.

Venue: Hasselt University, Martelarenlaan 42, 3500 Hasselt, Belgium

The Porous Media Tea Time Talks welcomes you to our 39th session on Tuesday, 20 September 2022, at 3:30 p.m. CEST.

We are pleased that Hongxia Li (Khalifa University) will talk about On-Chip Imaging and Characterization of Multiphase Flow Empowered by Micro-3D Printing, and Pranay Shrestha (University of Toronto) will talk about Operando Tomographic Imaging of Porous Energy Materials.

Join us via live YouTube stream.

Call for Award Nominations

InterPore recognizes young and senior scientists for their contributions in the field of porous media research as a sign of appreciation and as a stimulus for more excellent work. To ensure that the awards go to worthy awardees, we need you to nominate the candidates!

Please find more information about the InterPore Awards in this flyer.

ISC’s Podcast Series

Join more than 24 million podcast listeners of the ISC podcasts. There are three seasons with plenty of discussions on topics related to advancing science as a global public good.

There are a number of series of interesting episodes on women in science, diversity in science, combating racism in science and democratizing knowledge and access to tools to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). If you still are not familiar with SDGs stay tuned for an item in the next newsletter where we give you some key information and direct you to where you can learn more.

You may have been extensively exposed to the subjects discussed in the ISC podcasts as a result of the recent global attention these subjects have received. We, however, suggest you give these short and bite-sized discussions a go and perhaps include them as an activity for your research team.

ISC Discussion Time

Listen to the ISC podcasts and share your thoughts on an episode or a discussion that you enjoyed or found relevant to your work.

In ISC news items we propose topics for group discussions with your research team, either during a coffee break or in a dedicated session.

Promote your Publication

InterPore Members, do you want to promote your publication to the community? If so, please submit your highlight to newsletter@InterPore.org. 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 (500 characters) 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.

Postdoctoral positions

• Postdoctoral researcher in Experimental Geomechanics with application to mineral carbon storage, Department of Civil, Environmental and Geo-Engineering, University of Minnesota, USA
• Postdoctoral researcher on the development of a code for numerical simulation of THMC Thermal-Hydrologic-Mechanical-Chemical processes in porous media. Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, France
• Postdoctoral position on Advanced 2D-3D imaging of micro-organisms in sedimentary stone, Utrecht University, Netherlands

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.