Dear InterPore colleagues,

We got a packed Newsletter today, so I will leave you to it very soon. But not before congratulating the two winners of the InterPore Awards. Well done!

For those who would like to join InterPore2022, but have no funding: Please be aware that the application deadline is 28 Feb (see the item below).

All the best,

Matthijs de Winter
Editor-in-Chief
InterPore News

Applications for conference grants are still being accepted!

We are pleased to announce that the InterPore Foundation for Porous Media Science and Technology (InterPore Foundation) would once again like to offer a number of conference grants to scientists from academic institutions from countries with lower- or middle-income economies, as defined by the World Bank, and to graduate students.

In addition to paying the conference registration fees, the InterPore Foundation will provide up to €500 per recipient to go towards travel costs.

Visit the InterPore2022 website for more information on requirements and the application process.

Look here for more details regarding the application requirements.

Deadline: 28 February

InterPore Publication Committee

The InterPore Publication Committee, chaired by Nima Shokri, has been renewed recently. InterPore would like to thank the members of the former committee for their participation in this important activity: – John Selker, Oregon State University, USA – Rouhi Farajzadeh, Delft University, The Netherlands – Yves Méheust, Université Rennes 1, France – Jacques Huyghe, University of Limerick, Ireland.

A new committee has been formed and now consists of the following members:

Nima Shokri, Chair Hamburg University of Technology, Germany (contact)	Sahar Bakhshian The University of Texas at Austin, USA (contact)	Ran Holtzman Coventry University, UK (contact)

Helge Hellevang University of Oslo, Norway (contact)	Philippe Coussot Université Gustave Eiffel, France (contact)

InterPore warmly thanks the new members for having accepted to carry out this task.

The InterPore Publication Committee will be involved in developing and recommending strategic direction of publications to support the professional development and needs of InterPore members and support and advise Executive Committee with respect to new publications or journals that InterPore should be engaged and promoting for the benefits of its members and advance porous media science and technology.

InterPore Norway

A new Steering Committee has been elected at the last meeting of the Norwegian Chapter of InterPore (Interpore Norway 4th National Workshop in Bergen, December 2021).

We are delighted to introduce you to the new Steering Committee:

Sarah Gasda, Chair Norce	Jakub Both, Student Liaison and Communication Officer University of Bergen	Alex Hansen Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Seyed Ali Ghoreishian Norwegian University of Science and Technology	Aksel Hiorth University of Stavanger	Marcel Moura University of Oslo

More information about the Norwegian National Chapter can be found here.

Hellenic InterPore National Chapter (HINC)

Recouping from the pandemic restrictions, the HINC kick-off meeting and one-day conference will be hosted by the 13th Panhellenic Scientific Symposium in Chemical Engineering 2022. PSCCE will take place at the University of Patras, 2-4 June, 2022

The aim is to reach out to the local scientific and industry community and expand the HINC’s network within the local ecosystem of porous media and related applications. PSCCE is an excellent environment as it brings together scientists and engineers from the physical /chemical /industrial and material process disciplines, with activities spanning over a broad spectrum of applications.

HINC will have an entire day that will be split on a morning, dedicated special session “Processes in Porous Materials” then followed by an afternoon session for open “to-know-us-better” meetings; the day will conclude with the election of the Steering Committee. The program is still tentative, there will be updates in due course.

The goal will be to attract a critical mass of members and followers and, hopefully, industry stakeholders.

New Director of InterPore Academy

InterPore Academy was established in late 2020, with the goal of promoting InterPore educational, training and research activities via organizing short courses, webinars, thematic workshops and Young Academy activities. Despite already serving as the Chair of the Events Committee (which is responsible for organizing InterPore Annual Meetings), Prof. Oleg Iliev of Fraunhofer Institute, Kaiserslautern, Germany, graciously agreed to take on the additional responsibilities of launching the Academy as its founding director. With his exemplary commitment and dedication, he has been truly successful in this mission; organizing six short courses and two webinars. He is now stepping down as the director of the Academy. We are pleased to announce that Prof. Brian Berkowitz of the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, has agreed to lead the Academy. As a long-time member of InterPore, and recipient of the InterPore Honorary Lifetime Membership Award (2021), Brian is determined to lead the Academy to even greater successes and open up new opportunities for serving the porous media community.

You are warmly invited to the second session of the “Porous Media Tea Time Talks” webinars in 2022, featuring two young porous media researchers from Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour (France) and Stanford University (USA). The #PorousMediaTTT will be streamed live on March 1st at 18:00 CET / 09:00 PST via our YouTube Channel.

InterPore Award for Porous Media Research

The InterPore Award for Porous Media Research is given to mid-career researchers in recognition of outstanding research in general porous media, with emphasis on research conducted over the past 5 years. This years winner is: Sujit Datta from Princeton University, US.

From the committee: “Sujit possesses a rare talent for simplifying complex problems into testable models. He has elegantly combined experimental visualization in 3D porous media with physically-based computational modeling to make ground-breaking contributions to the field of porous media research. In particular, his work has explored uncharted areas, as well as helped resolve some of the long-standing challenges related to multiphase and multiscale dynamics in porous media, including complex fluids and bacterial communities—of critical importance in energy, environmental, industrial, and microfluidic processes. He also has an impressive and outstanding record of supervision and engagement with students and researchers across different disciplines and career stages.”

InterPore PoreLab Award for Young Researchers

The candidates who were nominated for the 2022 InterPore-PoreLab Award for Young Researchers were all very strong. They have done excellent work in the field of porous media from a fundamental point of view, including theoretical, computational, and experimental research. While all were extremely well deserving, the Sub-Committee evaluating the nominees decided to give the award to Dr. Senyou An based on his excellent PhD work accomplished in the Integrated Multiscale Porous Media Research Group at the University of Manchester (link), which led to 9 published peer-review papers. He was praised for his work particularly related to fluid flow and solute/heat transport in heterogeneous porous materials. Senyou developed several advanced computational models and GPU-based algorithms for in-depth understanding and enhancing the predictive capabilities for processes, and thoroughly investigated several complex fluid-dynamical phenomena. After graduation in September 2021, Senyou joined Imperial College of London to focus on pore to core-scale upscaling for gas injection in carbonate system.

Research Spotlight: Mi-Pore!

Our research group is based at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Politecnico di Milano, Italy and we are working on theoretical, computational, and experimental approaches for the characterization of porous materials across a wide range of applications and scales. Let us take you for a brief tour through our most recent research activities, featuring the dynamic characterization of surface processes, multi-scale reactive transport and bio-geochemical processes, and groundwater modelling.

Read the Research Spotlight here.

The Research Spotlight series highlights the work of InterPore Members. Short scientific texts with illustrations give an overview of a sampling of the current projects or group contributions in various fields of porous media research. If your institution or organization is an InterPore Member, and you would like to contribute a Research Spotlight, please contact Stef Lantin.

Call for Abstracts: FRAME 2020+2

17-20 May, 2022, Politecnico di Torino, Italy

The conference is aimed at presenting and discussing cutting-edge issues about modeling and development of numerical tools for porous fractured media simulations.

Areas of interest include, but are not limited to: Flow in fracture networks; Influence of roughness inside the fractures; Flow in fractured porous media; Up-scaling and homogenization; Coupled thermal, hydraulic and/or mechanical processes in fractured media; Fault reactivation and fracture deformation; Fracture propagation; Self organization of fracture networks; Non-linearities (such as geochemistry, dissolution inside the fractures etc…); Verification benchmarks; Uncertainty quantification/risk measurements; Artificial intelligence applied to fractured media, Graph based methods, model reduction.

Abstract submission will close on February 20th.

The aim is an in presence conference, but remote presentations will be accommodated if needed.

There is no conference fee, but registration will be compulsory.

Further information can be found at here

Call for abstracts: European Fluid Mechanics Conference (EFMC14)

13-16 September 2022, Athens, Greece

The 14th European Fluid Mechanics Conference (EFMC14) focusing on recent advances and future trends in fluid mechanics, bringing together the European fluid mechanics community for extensive discussion and networking opportunities, especially after such a long period of lockdowns and restrictions in meeting physically.

Plenary lectures, keynote lectures, mini symposia, workshops and oral presentations will make up the program, all delivered by distinguished invited speakers, active academics and researchers in the field of fluid mechanics and promising members of our scientific community, either students or young scientists.

For more information, please visit their website.

Abstract deadline: February 28

Summer school on Underground Hydrogen Storage (UHS).

11-14 July 2022, Delft, The Netherlands

The department of geoscience & engineering of TU Delft is organizing the 1st international summer school on Underground Hydrogen Storage (UHS). Lectures will be given by a broad range of speakers including leading academic scientists, industrial experts as well as colleagues from the policy sector and EU funding agencies. The course is developed for a broad audience who would like to learn more about the various aspects of UHS, with a specific focus on students and young researchers.

Please visit the website for more information and registration.

On the Role of Density-Driven Dissolution of CO2 in Phreatic Karst Systems

H. Class, P. Bürkle, T. Sauerborn, O. Trötschler, B. Strauch,M. Zimmer

Density-driven dissolution of CO2 in water is long known to be an important trapping mechanism in geological CO2 storage, while the same process is not in the focus of karst literature. Density-driven dissolution may substantially complement karst-formation theories in stagnant water or at low background flow rates. Seasonal variations of CO2 contents in cave atmospheres can trigger fingering regimes and enhanced dissolution of CO2 at the epiphreatic karst water table. The SFB 1313 paper presents experimental results on dissolution dynamics in a 6m high stagnant water column and compares the data to results of numerical simulations, where also background flow was varied.

Water Resources Research 57 (2021)
Corresponding Authors: Holger Class

Dynamic Micro-CT: Nondestructive imaging in the fourth dimension

Wesley De Boever, Jan Dewanckele, Martina Hümbert, Andreas Grieẞer, Sebastian Rief, Shumaiya Ferdoush, Pedro Martins, Marcial Gonzalez

Micro-computed tomography went through a dramatic evolution over the last years, from a novel and niche technique to a well-established and widely used method in materials and life sciences. The unique capability of micro-CT to provide non-destructive 3D imaging of a sample’s internal structure, its flexibility and lack of sample preparation caused the method to be a game-changer for scientists and engineers in all fields of application. Furthermore, the nondestructive nature of the method has always enabled users of micro-CT to investigate the behavior of their sample over time and under changing environmental conditions. However, without the use of limited synchrotron facilities, laboratory-based micro-CT systems could only allow slow processes to be followed. Now, recent developments in both hardware and software bring a revolution in the field of micro-CT and introduce true dynamic micro-CT at high temporal resolution to the lab.

Supplement of Microscopy and Analysis Magazine, Wiley Analytical Science, November 2021;
Corresponding Authors: Wesley De Boever

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.

• Postdoc Position in Reservoir Modeling of Carbon-Free Subsurface Energy Resources, School of Earth Sciences and the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center, Ohio State University, US

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.