Dear InterPore colleagues,

Here is another portion of your bi-weekly InterPore updates! We’ve got three winners of prestigious InterPore Awards, thanks to the InterPore Foundation. Congratulations! Also, InterPore2023 is moving forward. Those who have submitted an abstract should have received a notification. And for those who haven’t yet submitted an abstract, it is still possible.

The ISC draws our attention to the 8th International Woman and Girls in Science Day. An important topic to discuss within your group. InterPore also strongly supports related efforts through our DEI Committee.

Finally, two interesting scientific papers are mentioned in the InJournal-section, jobs, chapter news, abstract call…..

…happy reading!

Matthijs de Winter
Editor-in-Chief
InterPore News

Registration for InterPore2023 is now open!

It is still possible to submit an abstract for InterPore2023! Abstract submission for online presentations and in-person posters will remain open until 01 May 2023! Submit your abstract here.

Abstract acceptance notifications for all submissions of in-person presentations have been delivered. Not sure of the status of your abstract(s)? You can view it at the bottom of the “My Conference” page. Notifications for online submissions will be delivered shortly.

Minisymposia

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 InterPore2023 website for more information on requirements and the application process.

Application Deadline: Monday, 28 February

Workshops

Two workshops will be given on Wednesday, 24 May, during the parallel sessions. The workshop events organized by the Student Affairs Committee (SAC) and Student Local Organizing Committee are free and open to all registered participants of InterPore2023.

More info

Short Courses

Platinum Sponsor for InterPore2023

National Chapters: Iran, Mexico, Brazil

Iran Chapter to host 2022 KC Lecture

The Iran InterPore Chapter will host the 2022 Kimberly-Clark lecture, “The heart: the only pump the failure of which cannot be assessed through stress analysis” to be delivered by Prof. Huyghe on 5 March 2023 from 16:00-17:30 (CET). See here for more details.

Mexico Chapter Meeting program released

The Mexico InterPore Chapter is pleased to announce the program for this year’s chapter conference (RACMI 2023) scheduled on 2-3 March. View the full program here.

Brazil Chapter Meeting

The next meeting of the Brazil InterPore Chapter will take place 7-9 August 2023. Abstract submission will open on 6 March. Please visit the Brazil InterPore Chapter page for more details and updates on this event.

Three InterPore Award Winners announced

InterPore Meritorious Service Medal Steffen Berg Principal Science Expert at Shell Global Solutions International B.V, The Netherlands Steffen Berg holds a MSc degree in materials science from the Saarland University, Germany. After a PostDoc at Princeton University in the Microfluidics Research and Engineering Group, he joined Shell as a staff scientist in the Netherlands. He is also a visiting reader at Imperial College London. Steffen joined InterPore in 2011. That same year, he was involved in the creation of the Netherlands National Chapter, which was officially formed in 2012 and the first InterPore national chapter. He successfully campaigned for making Shell an institutional member of InterPore. Through Steffen’s efforts, Shell has remained an active member and has supported InterPore conferences as a platinum sponsor. In 2014, under Steffen’s leadership, the NL chapter joined forces with researchers from Belgium and Luxembourg and the BeNeLux chapter was formed. Steffen remained chair of Benelux chapter until 2017, and since then has remained a member of the Steering Committee. In 2017, Steffen was directly involved in the creation of the InterPore Foundation, of which he is currently the Chair. The time and effort invested by Steffen in InterPore have been enormous and his dedication has been unparalleled. InterPore and InterPore Foundation congratulate Mr. Berg on this honor and wish him continued success.

Honorary Lifetime Membership Award Prof. Dorthe Wildenschild School of Chemical, Biological, and Environmental Engineering, Oregon State University, USA Dorthe Wildenschild is a professor of environmental engineering at the College of Engineering of the Oregon State University, USA, with research focused on flow and transport in porous media, addressing research questions about subsurface water pollution and energy-related storage. Recent work includes the optimization of geologic storage of anthropogenic CO2 in subsurface reservoirs; exploration of colloid-facilitated transport of contaminants in groundwater; microbial enhanced oil recovery; and investigations in support of more effective groundwater remediation techniques. Her scientific work bridges the gap between the development of highly accurate experiments that can support and augment new theories and the development of numerical models for complex applications in the field of environmental engineering. Dr. Wildenschild has played a very important role in the development of transformative technology, with an enormous scientific impact. She is a highly motivated environmental engineer, well regarded in the academic community and is an inspiration to a new generation of students. InterPore and InterPore Foundation congratulate Prof. Wildenschild on this honor and wish her continued success.

InterPore Medal for Porous Media Research Philippe Coussot Laboratoire Navier (Univ. Gustave Eiffel-ENPC-CNRS), France Prof. Philippe Coussot is an internationally highly recognized researcher in the field of rheology of complex liquids. In particular, he has done groundbreaking work in the exploration of unconfined, bulk liquid flows by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Furthermore, he has significantly contributed to the physics of transport in porous media in several other fields, including understanding internal mechanisms of drying and imbibition of porous media, flow of non-Newtonian fluids in porous media, probabilistic modelling of colloid transport in porous media, bound and free water transfers in wood or cellulosic materials and internal characterization of liquid distribution and transfers in porous media. Philippe Coussot embodies in an excellent manner the idea of interdisciplinarity of porous media research. He established fruitful links between modern experimental physics, hydrodynamics and materials science with respect to flow of complex liquids in porous media. InterPore and InterPore Foundation congratulate Prof. Coussot on this honor and wish him continued success.

ISC: The Annual International Day of Women and Girls in Science

On 11 February was the International Day of Women and Girls in Science and its 8th Annual Assembly under the theme I.D.E.A.S. (Innovate. Demonstrate. Elevate. Advance. Sustain.).

This day was an opportunity to promote full and equal access to and participation in science for women and girls. The ISC dedicated a blog on this topic.

ISC Discussion Time: Discuss with your team the key benefits of achieving equal access to and participation in science for women and girls? What are the main threats you can think of that can be slowing down this process? What might the consequences be?

In ISC news items we propose topics for group discussions with your research team.

Call for Abstracts: Wettability and Porous Media

11 – 13 October, 2023, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA

The 15th International Symposium on Wettability and Porous Media will focus on descriptions, measurements, and models of reservoir wettability, pore-scale models of flow and wettability properties in permeable media, alterations of wettability and physical mechanisms that underlie these changes, and state-of-the-art core preservation and restoration techniques to improve quality of laboratory data.

For more info, please visit their website.

Wafer‐Scale Fabrication of Hierarchically Porous Silicon and Silica by Active Nanoparticle‐Assisted Chemical Etching and Pseudomorphic Thermal Oxidation

Stella Gries, Manuel Brinker, Berit Zeller‐Plumhoff, Dagmar Rings, Tobias Krekeler, Elena Longo, Imke Greving, and Patrick Huber

Synchrotron-based X-ray nanotomography and electron microscopy reveal that metal-assisted chemical etching combined with photolithography allows one to fabricate single-crystalline silicon with hierarchical, open porosity that can be transformed structure-conserving by oxidation to silica glass. Due to their multiscale tailorable vascularization the resulting wafer-scale monoliths promise liquid-infused hybrid materials, e.g., for energy storage and harvesting, on-chip sensorics, actuorics and (bio-)optofluidics.

Small, February, 2206842
Corresponding Author: Patrick Huber
Additional press release

Experiments and Simulations on Plume Spreading by Engineered Injection and Extraction in Refractive Index Matched Porous Media

Lauren J. Sather, Eric J. Roth, Roseanna M. Neupauer, John P. Crimaldi, David C. Mays

We started with an idea from chaos theory: Stretching and folding optimizes plume spreading in laminar flows. This idea prompted a series of simulations and experiments (with some novel methods and wall effect mitigation) showing how engineered injection and extraction (EIE) can be used to create hydraulic building blocksHE.1943-5584.0002167) that drive plume spreading beyond the constraints of porous media heterogeneity. Along the way, we derived how injection and extraction triggers mixing at multiple scales and recorded experimental evidence of reversible hydrodynamic dispersion. We conclude that, although it does not always generate chaos, EIE offers a strategy to improve plume-spreading.

Water Resources Research Volume59, Issue2, February 2023, e2022WR032943
Corresponding Author: David Mays

InterPore Members can promote their publications to the community via the InterPore In Journals 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.

PhD

• PhD position on geochemical processes and multiphase flow in porous media, Department Nuclear Waste Management division, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany
• PhD position on Multi-scale modeling of multiphase flows of complex fluids in porous media based on microfluidic experimentation and at the Darcy scale: application to the rehabilitation of polluted soils, Institut de Mécanique et d’Ingénierie de Bordeaux (I2M), Bordeaux, France.
• PhD on Experimental and theoretical study of high heating-rate drying in porous media: application to biomass pyrolysis. Institut de Mécanique et d’Ingénierie de Bordeaux (I2M), Bordeaux, France

Post-doc

• Post-doc – On pore scale modelling of multiphase flow in porous media, Department Nuclear Waste Management, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany
• Research Associate in Pore-scale Imaging of Multiphase Flow in the Subsurface, Department of Earth Science & Engineering, Imperial College, Londen, UK

(Assistent/associated-) prof

• Junior professorship in geosciences (Four-year tenure track), CY Cergy Paris Université (Paris and Cergy), France

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.