Dear InterPore colleagues,

It is almost Easter! If your association with Easter is primarily a bunny with chocolate eggs, sorry, no Easter egg hidden in this edition. Unless you’ve never realized that quite some banners in this Newsletter are clickable. They are clickable and not supposed to be an Easter egg!

And plenty of opportunities or reasons to enjoy festivities of some sort! First and foremost the Chapter Award and the recipients of the Rosettes (congrats!). The InterPore2024 meeting in Qingdao is coming up soon now! A webinar, the tea time talks, the porous media course… A truckload of new positions available. An inaugural lecture of our president-elect coming up…

All the best,

Matthijs de Winter
Editor-in-Chief
InterPore News

InterPore2024

Conference Courses

Don’t miss your chance to register for one of our Conference Courses at InterPore2024, which will take place on 12 May and 17 May.

Participation in the conference courses is in-person only (online participation is not possible.)

If you are interested in registering for one of these courses, you may do so in conjunction with your conference registration.

If you will not be attending the conference or have already registered and wish to update your registration, please contact Margaret Dieter.

MDPI Energies Student Poster Award

Nominate yourself for the MDPI Energies Student Poster Award, which is given in recognition of outstanding student poster presentations at the annual InterPore conference. All registered students who have a poster presentation are eligible to be considered for this award. Up to two awards will be given, each consisting of a prize of 500€. To qualify, you must indicate during abstract submission that you wish to be included in the competition. More information can be found here.

This award has been made possible by a generous grant from MDPI Energies.

New Exhibitors

We are delighted to announce that we have two additional exhibitors who will be joining us with an exhibition booth in Qingdao! ProBiot Group will be in Booth #8 and PYNN Corporation in Booth #12. Please make sure you stop by during our dedicated exhibition, poster & networking sessions to check out their products and services.

And now…Qingdao!

InterPore2024 will be in Qingdao. Described as a city of “red tiles, green trees, blue sky, and blue sea.” Qingdao has a lot of things to offer with respect to science, science history and porous media. This week: Dazhu Mountain

Dazhu Mountain, located in the southern part of Huangdao District, Qingdao City, Shandong Province, China, is a beautiful mountain peak surrounded by the sea on three sides. Its main peak, Dazhai Summit, rises majestically with an elevation of 486.4 meters, making it the highest point in the region. The Dazhu Mountain Scenic Area covers an approximate area of 65 square kilometers and presents visitors with two main scenic spots: the Shimen Temple Scenic Area and the Zhushan Xiugu Valley Scenic Area. Not only does it encompass a wealth of natural landscapes, such as peculiar peaks and rocks, the clear and sweet spring water, and a splendid sea of rhododendron flowers in springtime, but it also integrates numerous cultural elements, including the historically rich Shimen Temple and ancient Buddhist grottoes among other historical relics.

Top Sponsors for InterPore2024

InterPore Elections 2024: Call for Nominations

InterPore Elections are coming up, spanning an election period from 1 – 30 November 2024. With this announcement, we wish to inform the Society members about the details of the election procedure.

Who will be elected: One President-Elect, four Council members and four members of the Student Affairs Committee (SAC).

Who is conducting the elections: The Election Committee, chaired by Prof. Gabriel Wittum.

Who can vote? All current InterPore members.

Nomination Committee: In accordance with the InterPore bylaws, a Nomination Committee has been formed, chaired by Michel Quintard (CNRS, Institut de Mécanique des Fluides de Toulouse, France), .

Members of the Nomination Committee are:

Eduardo Abreu
University of Campinas, Brazil. email
Lauren Beckingham
Auburn University, USA, email
Reza Soltanian
University of Cincinnati, USA. email
Ruina XU
Tsinghua University, China. email

How to nominate: Please volunteer to run for an office and/or nominate candidates now; please contact Michel Quintard or any other member of the Nomination Committee. Criteria for the selection of candidates by EC and approval by the Council are (1) personal qualifications, (2) balancing industry and academic/research institutions, and (3) ensuring – as much as possible – gender and geographical balance. Only nominees who agree to serve, once elected, will be accepted.

More information on the committees involved and the election procedure can be found here and feel free to contact Michel Quintard for any related questions.

Nomination deadline: 1 June 2024.

Inaugural Lecture Vahid Niasar

We are delighted to announce and invite you to the Inaugural Lecture of a very active InterPore member, Professor Vahid Niasar. The lecture is entitled “Beyond Pores: Understanding the Complexities of Porous Media Phenomena in their Applications” and will be held on 30 April 2024 at 3-4 pm at the University of Manchester, UK. This is an in-person and online event, and Vahid would be delighted if you could join.

Please follow the zoom link or ask Vahid for details.

InterPore Journal

The wait is almost over!

We’re pleased to inform you that the very first issue of InterPore Journal is set to be published online in mid-April. This inaugural edition will feature contributions from a range of experts: Majid Hassanizadeh, Martin Blunt, Nima Shokri, Zicheng Wang, Tuanny Cajuhi, Signe Kjelstrup, and Marc Prat….

… and cover the following topics: Modeling of desiccation cracks in Opalinus Clay, nanothermodynamics, research needs for the energy transition, surface tension, soil salinization, evaporation and impact of corner liquid films, and fluids’ phase behavior and flow dynamics under different phase conditions.

Stay tuned for updates, and remember, we’ll also be distributing the first issue in print at the upcoming conference. Keep an eye out for more details!

Chapter News

Iran Conference on Porous Media

The Iran InterPore Chapter will host the first Iran Conference on Porous Media from 24-25 September 2024. The conference will take place at the School of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran. The topics will include diverse applications of porous media in: geosciences, energy, medicine, biology and environmental engineering, and industry.

Sixth InterPore BeNeLux Chapter Meeting

Free Registration is open now for the sixth InterPore BeNeLux Chapter Meeting. The meeting will be held at Luxembourg University (2 avenue de la Fonte L-4364 Esch sur Alzette) on 11-12 April 2024. Visit the event page to learn more about the Program & Speakers and to register.

SP-PM course

Don’t miss your chance to register for Pore 1-8 “Microfluidics for Flow and Transport in Porous Media”

Our next InterPore Academy SP-PM course, Pore 1-8 “Microfluidics for Flow and Transport in Porous Media” will take place online on Sundays, starting 7-28 April 2024 (14:00-17:00 Central Daylight Time) with Wen Song, University of Texas at Austin. Please note that all lectures will be offered live. There will be no recordings available.

This course provides an overview of microfluidics in the context of understanding the pore- and interfacial-scale processes that control multiphase flow and reactions in porous media. This course will begin with a review of fluid mechanics and their reduction to the sub-millimeter length scale. Microfluidics and their fabrication approaches will be discussed, including a lab tour and recent commercialization. Approaches for integrating geochemistry into porous media micromodels will be discussed, along with examples of recent scientific advancements to show the potential of microfluidics toward understanding coupled flow and reactions in porous media.

The upcoming PorousMediaTTT webinar is a special session dedicated to the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) of InterPore2024 at China University of Petroleum (East China).

InterPore Rosettes 2024

InterPore activities are carried out mainly by volunteers. It takes many volunteer working hours to make an international platform like InterPore a success. Recognizing and honoring volunteers sets a standard for service, encourages a sustained commitment to participation, and inspires others to commit themselves as well.

In recognition of extraordinarily active members, the InterPore Rosette 2024 will be awarded to the following members, who have made significant contributions to InterPore activities:

InterPore National Chapter Award 2023

Every year, the InterPore National Chapter Award is given in recognition of the many activities organized by a chapter in recent years (in particular during the past one) and of its contribution to making the InterPore society flourish.

The National Chapter Committee (NCC), chaired by Eduardo Abreu, selects the winning chapter during the first trimester of each year on the basis of activities reported in the annual reports of chapters.

This year’s award goes to the Saudi Arabia National Chapter, which has shown exceptional determination and commitment to excellence within the InterPore mission. The Saudi Arabia Chapter has a well-structured committee; they have organized a chapter meeting every year (2021, 2022 and 2023) with substantial participation (researchers, PhD students, and professors); great involvement in the interactions with InterPore and constant communication among the community in their country and internationally; they maintain consistent interaction with InterPore Office to keep their webpage updated and to share timely reports regarding their meetings; they have a strong membership with which they keep regular communication; and their overall participation in the InterPore network should be praised.

Congratulations to our friends in the Saudi Arabia Chapter on their good work!

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.

PhD

• PhD position on Biofilm formation in porous media. University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
• PhD position on Mechanics of swelling clay faults from molecular simulation to earthquakes. Laboratoire Navier, École des Ponts/Univ. Gustave Eiffel/CNRS, Champs-sur-Marne, France
• PhD position on Clay thermodynamic and friction properties, influence on earthquakes. Institute of Earth Sciences of Orléans (ISTO), University of Orléans, France
• PhD position: Developing Vertical Equilibrium Models for Simulating CO2 Storage in Depleted Gas Reservoirs.
  Institute of GeoEnergy Engineering, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK
• PhD position on geochemical modeling for GeoH2 production. The Hope Group, Department of Petroleum Engineering, Texas Tech University, USA

Post-doc

• Postdoc Researcher on Biofilm formation in porous media. University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
• Post-doc position on Adaptivity (regularization, solvers, meshes) and a posteriori error estimators for the geological sequestration of CO2 in the framework of the SPE 11 benchmark. Inria Paris / IFP Energies nouvelles, 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.”