Dear InterPore colleagues,

A webinar, Chapter meeting, call for papers, award winners (congratulations!), PMTTT, information and tips on Chinese visas and banking, a post-doc position, and science… today’s Newsletter nicely reflects the broad scope of the InterPore community. You can even find something about Chinese paper cutting. On the topic of paper, I once showed students pieces of paper under a scanning electron microscope, showing the fibrous structure. Next, we looked at pencil marks, tiny sheets of carbon flaking off from being dragged over the ‘rough’ paper. A distinctly different mechanism from a liquid flowing from a pen!

Porous media science can be abstract and challenging, but can also be beautiful and comprehensible!

All the best,

Matthijs de Winter
Editor-in-Chief
InterPore News

Abstracts for poster and online presentations are still being accepted and can be submitted at the InterPore2024 website.

Registration for InterPore2024 is open! Limited space events are first come, first serve, so be sure to save your spot by registering now!

DEI Lunch Forum

Be a part of the conversation! Join InterPore’s Diversity, Equality & Inclusiveness Committee for the DEI Lunch Forum on Monday, 13 May. The event will include lunch, a lecture by Hang Deng, Assistant Professor at Peking University, on the importance of mentorship, and an open discussion about the role we all play in promoting diversity, equality and inclusion. This event is free and open to all participants of InterPore2024.

Conference Courses

Join us for one of our Conference Courses, which will be offered as satellite events of the InterPore Annual Conference in Qingdao, 13-16 May 2024. The Conference Courses will take place in-person on the day before and the day after the conference (12 and 17 May). The course program is comprised of both half and full-day offerings (3-hour or 6-hour lectures) and includes:

• Multiphase Flow in Permeable Media: A Pore-Scale Perspective – Instructor: Martin Blunt
• Capillarity in Porous Media at Different Scales – Instructor: Majid Hassanizadeh
• Micro-scale flow and multiphysical transport in porous media (In Chinese) – Instructor: Moran Wang
• Introduction to powder metallurgically manufactured porous materials – Instructor: Olaf Andersen
• Multi-Scale Multi-Module Correlative Analysis including image Analysis (CT/FIB/Avizo – Hands On Tutorial) – Instructor: Eric Pui-Lam Ho
• Machine learning integration with pore-scale studies: concepts and applications – Instructor: Saeid Sadeghnejad
• Advances in CO2 Sequestration in Reactive Basaltic Rocks through Mineral Carbonation – Instructors: Helge Hellevang, Mohammad Nooraiepour & Mohammad Masoudi

Please visit our InterPore2024 Conference Courses page to learn more.

Conference Proceedings

Submissions for conference proceedings are now open for registered authors. The conference proceedings will be published by Springer and will have an ISBN. All accepted conference abstracts, whether presented in person or online, for oral or poster presentations, will be eligible for submitting a paper for inclusion in the proceedings. Please note that submitting the full paper for publication is optional. Details on the submission process can be found on our website.

The submission deadline is 31 May 2024.

Mobile Payment in China

China’s mobile payment landscape has undergone a revolutionary transformation with the rise of Alipay and WeChat Pay. These two major players have changed the way financial transactions are conducted in the country. Users can easily make payments for various goods and services with just a few taps on their mobile devices. The integration of services beyond transactions, such as bill payments and financial management, has contributed to the widespread adoption of mobile payments. The use of QR-code technology has further simplified the process, allowing even small businesses to accept mobile payments.

Alipay and WeChat Pay

Alipay and WeChat Pay further optimizes the payment process experience for global tourists. In addition to offline store consumption, taking public transportation, subway, taxi, cycling, booking hotels, air tickets, train tickets, and scenic spot tickets in China can all be achieved through Alipay and WeChat Pay.

Alipay and WeChat Pay both support overseas banks to link cards for payment. The following tutorials can teach you how to link your bank card to WeChat pay or Alipay.

Introduction videos for Alipay and Wechat.

Gala Dinner

InterPore and the Local Organizing Committee welcome all in-person participants to the Gala Dinner on Monday, 13 May. This event is included in the in-person conference registration fees. The seated dinner will be held in China Hall at the Shangri-La Hotel. Beverages are also included.

Separate tickets to the event for accompanying guests are available for purchase (€45) during conference registration or separately.

China’s Visa-Free Policy

Several more countries have been added to China’s growing visa exemption policies. In addition to the visa-free agreements for travel through 30 November 2024 already in place for France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and Malaysia, ordinary passport holders from Kazakhstan, Singapore and Thailand (effective 01 March) will also be able to do business or travel in China without a visa for up to 15 days.

Chinese Art: Journey through Calligraphy and Paper Cutting

Are you interested in witnessing the elegance of Chinese paper cutting, a folk art dating back to the Northern Dynasties, where each delicate pattern tells a story steeped in historical and cultural significance? Are you intrigued by the timeless beauty and cultural richness of Chinese calligraphy, an ancient art form that has evolved over millennia? Then join us on our journey through calligraphy and paper cutting on Sunday, 12 May at the Shangri-La Hotel.

During this 2-hour workshop you will have the chance to prepare your own piece of art for you to take home as a souvenir. The workshop is open to all in-person participants of InterPore2024 without any extra charges.

For more information please visit our website.

Top Sponsors for InterPore2024

InterPore2025

While most of you are preparing for InterPore2024, the InterPore office, Program Committee, and the Local Organizing Team at Sandia National Laboratory, chaired by Hongkyu Yoon, are hard at work getting ready to welcome you in Albuquerque, New Mexico from 19-22 May 2025 at InterPore2025 – InterPore’s 17th Annual Meeting!

InterPore Journal AGU Special Issue

Whether or not you attended the 2023 AGU Fall Meeting last December and participated in the session titled “Coupled Flow Processes in Fractured Porous Media Across Scales: Recent Advances in Experimental and Modeling Efforts,” we eagerly await your contributions for the special issue planned by the InterPore Journal in connection with this session.

The forthcoming special issue, sharing the same title as the AGU session, aims to encompass the interaction of fluid flow with mechanical-chemical-biological-thermal-processes in fractured geological formations along with the subsurface phenomena and the related applications. We invite you to share your expertise and contribute to this issue. More information can be found here (pdf, 177 kB).

Best regards,

the Guest Editors Jeffrey D. Hyman (Lead Guest Editor), Peter K. Kang, Adriana Paluszny, Jan-Olof Selroos, Dani Or

Kimberly-Clark Lectureship

Prof. Ruben Juanes, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, is the Kimberly-Clark Distinguished Lecturer of 2024. InterPore has received more than 35 applications to host Prof. Juanes from universities and organisations all over the world. After his presence in February and early March in the UK, he will present his lecture „Fluids, Fingers, Fractures and Fractals: Patterns in Porous Media“ online during the RACMI2024 (InterPore Mexico Chapter Annual Meeting) on 7 March.

If you wish to get in touch with Prof. Juanes about a potential presentation, please contact Sandra Bartsch.

Chapter News

Mexico Chapter Meeting

The 10th Annual Conference of Mexico Chapter of InterPore will take place in a hybrid format on the 7-8 March 2024.

Please see here for more details.

Free InterPore Academy Webinar

Challenging reactive transport modeling from pore-scale observations

Speaker: Catherine Noiriel, University Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France
Webpage • LinkedIn • Scholar

Duration: 1 hour
Date/Time: Tuesday, 23 April 2024, 4-5 pm CEST

Abstract: Flow and transport are important in hydrology and many geo-engineering applications such as carbon dioxide storage, geothermal energy or in situ recovery. Developing a full understanding of the feedbacks between geochemical reactions and flow and transport at the reservoir scale requires investigations of geochemical mechanisms at the… more info

InterPore Congratulates its new Award Winners

Parenthood Grant

For all ISC Members and their networks: If you are an early-career Principal Investigator currently on parental leave, or will soon be in parental leave, you can apply to the International Brain Research Organization’s Parenthood Grant, and have the chance to obtain supplemental laboratory funding. The deadline for application is 15 March. More information on this is available here.

InterPore has been a member of the International Science Counsel since 2020. The ISC is an international organization comprised of more than 245 member societies, organizations, academies, and associations from all fields of science, with the mission “to act as the global voice for science.”

Summerschool FLOWTIME

10-21 June 2024, Cargèse, Corsica, France

Linking life-supporting functions of the subsurface across disciplines: The 6th Cargèse summer school will be jointly organized by CNRS, NSF, the university of Rennes and the University of Oslo. It will take place from 10-21 June 2024 at the Cargese Institute, Corsica, France. The summer school will provide high-level interdisciplinary training on porous and fracture media processes. This 6th summer school will more particularly focus on life-supporting functions of the subsurface at interfaces between hydrology, geophysics and biological processes.

More info (pdf, 485 kb)

Effect of reservoir heterogeneity on well placement prediction in CO2-EOR projects using machine learning surrogate models: Benchmarking of boosting-based algorithms

T. Esfandi, S. Sadeghnejad, A. Jafari

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) during enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in underground reservoirs offer both environmental and economic benefits. This study explores the efficiency of five machine learning boosting algorithms (AdaBoost, CatBoost, Gradient Boosting, LightGBM, and XGBoost) to achieve accurate well placement during CO2-EOR. The research considers various reservoir scenarios with different geological heterogeneity levels and various parameters (well locations, well distance in inverted five-spot patterns, pattern angle, and flow rates) are explored using a compositional reservoir simulator. The results demonstrate that LightGBM outperformed the other algorithms with the lowest error and fastest run time.

Geoenergy Science and Engineering, 233, 212564.
Corresponding Author: Saeid Sadeghnejad

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.

• Post-doctorate on modeling and development of a code for numerical simulation of Underground Hydrogen Storage (UHS). Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, Paul, 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. It is also possible to post the position on the InterPore website. Log in through MyInterPore and click “Submit A Job Opening.”