Dear InterPore colleagues,

Some very exciting news! You may have picked it up from the FlashNews as well, earlier this week: The InterPore Journal has been launched! You can read all about it below.

Many more calls in today’s newsletter, including the one to participate in the survey related to child care. It is important to InterPore to be as inclusive as possible, and if members of the community are restricted due to childcare requirements, then maybe that can be fixed! Take a few minutes and participate in the survey.

Other calls relate to jobs, experimental opportunities, the KC lecturer, etc. And the InJournals section has two interesting papers that call for being studied.

All the best,

Matthijs de Winter
Editor-in-Chief
InterPore News

InterPore Journal has been launched!

It is not every day that a new journal is born, however we are happy to announce that after years of hard work and planning, the InterPore Journal has officially launched!

InterPore Journal, owned by the society, aims to advance our understanding of, and research on, technical and industrial advances in porous media, to gain an improved understanding of the processes and phenomena involved, and to provide a medium in which this information can be easily and freely be shared within the international research community. With your support, we are keen to make InterPore Journal the main destination for high quality research on the wide range of multidisciplinary multiscale topics related to porous media science and technology.

Our Board of Editors is complete with 10 members, our Committee on Publication Ethics is complete with 4 members, and we currently have 28 members on our Editorial Board. You can find out more information on our Board of Editors here, our Committee on Publication Ethics here, and our Editorial Board here.

We are also grateful for all who have already registered to act as a reviewer! If you have not already done so, you can do so here.

Last but not least – we look very much forward to receiving your work for possible publication in our first issue! For more information on how to prepare your paper for submission, see our Guidelines here.

And as always, please contact Laura Lenz with any questions or suggestions which you may have!

We look forward to hearing from you!

InterPore Conferences Childcare Survey

InterPore conferences are a vital opportunity for academic and industry researchers. Even with new technological advances allowing for remote communication, face-to-face networking and interaction still play a very important role in the success of attending a conference. One of the barriers our participants may face when deciding whether they are able to attend an event, relates to childcare. InterPore is dedicated to better accommodate families, and mothers in particular, who may face the difficulty of reconciling the demands of both career and family. For this purpose, we have created a quick survey, to determine whether offering a childcare option during our conferences is a viable and necessary measure. This survey is of special interest to all parents who wish for more family-friendly conferences.

To access the survey, click here.

Kimberly-Clark Distinguished Lecturer 2024

Prof. Ruben Juanes
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Apply now to request to host the 2024 InterPore Kimberly-Clark Distinguished Lecturer at your institute. Please visit our website for further information on how to apply.

Hosts may select one of two lecture options:

1. Fluids, Fingers, Fractures and Fractals: Patterns in Porous Media
2. Man-made Earthquakes and the Energy Transition

An abstract of both lectures and a short biography of Prof. Juanes can be found on our website.

InterPore Foundation on LinkedIn

Connect with the InterPore Foundation on LinkedIn to stay informed of foundation activities such as grants for participation at InterPore events, recognition of researchers for excellence in porous media, support for open access publication, childcare at InterPore conferences and more!

Chapter News

Germany InterPore Chapter

The next meeting of the German Chapter of InterPore will take place at the KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt and will be organized at the Mathematical Institute for Machine Learning and Data Science (MIDS) by the Chair of Geomatics and Geomathematics.

The conference provides a national forum for interdisciplinary exchange and collaboration of experts from numerous German research institutions, universities, and industry. The topics of the conference therefore deal with all issues of porous media research, from experiment to theory and from science to industrial application.

Abstract submission is now open through 16 July. Registration is open through 3 September.

See here for more information.

France InterPore Chapter

The 16th edition of JEMP (Journées d’Etudes des Milieux Poreux) – the InterPore France conference on porous media – will be held at IFP Energie nouvelles, Rueil-Malmaison (near Paris) from 17 to 19 October 2023.

The discussions, mostly interdisciplinary, involve fundamental topics such as applied mathematics, fluid mechanics, heat and mass transfer, and process engineering. The scientific research carried out in these domains is relevant in several major areas related to environmental and societal needs: energy storage, pollution abatement, renewable energies, agri-food and health.

The deadline to submit abstracts has been extended to 21 July. Click here for more details.

China InterPore Chapter: Meeting Report

The 6th International Conference on Digital Core Analysis & 2023 Annual Conference of the China InterPore Chapter was held in the China University of Petroleum (East China) from 6-7 July. The conference was hosted by Research Center of Multi-phase Flow in Porous Media, co-organized by the China InterPore Chapter. Prof. Jun Yao, the Honorary Chair of China InterPore Chapter, is the chairman of this conference.

This conference is a catalyst for groundbreaking research, transformative ideas, and collaborative endeavors. A total of approximately 150 researchers and academics from 7 countries attended, of which 27 experts and scholars gave lectures on a vast array of porous media related research. Read more about the event here.

Israel InterPore Chapter: Meeting Report

The third annual conference of the Israel InterPore Chapter was held at the Grand Water Research Institute (GWRI) within the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Technion- Israel Institute of Technology on 29 June. The event was organized by Ziv Moreno from the Volcan Agriculture Institute and Yaniv Edery from the Technion. More than forty researchers and students from Israel attended, presenting a broad array of porous media-related research that ranged from membranes and gels to soil and rock. The conference also featured an engaging poster session showcasing innovative research in the field. This conference provided a vital opportunity for collaboration and knowledge sharing among researchers and students. Looking forward, we are excited about the prospects of next year’s meeting.

The Israeli Chapter of InterPore aims to foster collaboration among a diverse network of porous media researchers from academia, research institutes, and industry. As part of our chapter activities, we organize an annual workshop to facilitate the presentation of not only recent research achievements but also fundamental concepts and research-related challenges, in an effort to promote interdisciplinary collaboration.

Call for access: Excite

The EXCITE Network is a European infrastructure initiative for scientists working on unravelling the secrets of Earth materials by using some of the world’s best electron and X-ray imaging facilities. The EXCITE Network makes leading-edge research facilities accessible to all Earth scientists. We connect with you, offer access to workshops and webinars, help to prepare your proposals for facility access, and actively support your research goals.

The 4th call has opened. Free facility access can be applied for until 31 August.

For more information, please visit their website.

X-ray 3D imaging–based microunderstanding of granular mixtures: Stiffness enhancement by adding small fractions of soft particles

K. Taghizadeh, M. Ruf, S. Luding, H. Steeb

Granular media consisting of equally sized stiff glass spheres and soft rubber spheres are investigated for different mixing ratios. At different stress states, the sphere packings were mechanically characterized using low-frequency ultrasound in combination with X-ray Computed Tomography (XRCT). It turned out that adding up to 20 % (soft) rubber spheres has not reduced the effective stiffness of the packings, but improved it. However, when the fraction of the rubber spheres is more than 30 %, the stiffness begins to decrease. X-ray images have shown that the stiffness evolution can be explained by the length of force chains of glass particles.

PNAS Vol. 120, No. 26
Corresponding Author: Kianoosh Taghizadeh

A microfluidic chip for geoelectrical monitoring of critical zone processes

Flore Rembert, Arnaud Stolz, Cyprien Soulaine, Sophie Roman

Geoelectrical methods are commonly used to monitor dynamic processes (e.g. multi-phase flow, geochemical reactions, microbial activity) in the critical zone, i.e. the near-surface environment hosting drinking water and continental life. The interpretation of electrical measurements, however, is still a matter of controversy as the identification of the electrical signature of each underlying process is challenging. Scientists from the University of Orleans have miniaturized geoelectrical acquisition on microfluidic chips mimicking critical zone processes. Combined with high-resolution optical imaging, they identified the electrical signature of calcite dissolution. Assessing the contribution of processes will help to better monitor the critical zone using geophysics.

Lab Chip, 2023, Advance Article
Corresponding Author: Cyprien Soulaine

InterPore Members can promote their publications to the community via the InterPore InJournals Section of the Newsletter. If you wish to do so, please submit your publication 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.

• Postdoctoral Position on Vapor Based Development of Porous Thin Films for Sensing Applications. Faculty of Science, University of Amsterdam, 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.