Energy, Resources and the Environment

What to see at EGU?: Young Scientist events

ERE Matters April 6, 2015

Within a week the EGU General Assembly will kick off! This year the topic will be A Voyage Through Scales. For those that will attend for the first time, the scale of EGU itself may be impressive enough already. So how do you decide where to go? Here we hope to point you to a few interesting sessions, in case you get completely lost.

To start with, there are a number of interesting events for Young Scientists. For you! 🙂

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Ice Breaker Reception

On Sunday evening the EGU General Assembly 2015 will be kicked off with the Ice Breaker Reception, at 18.30h in Foyer E. A gathering point for young scientists provides the opportunity to meet like-minded fellows, especially if it is your first time at the General Assembly or you are coming alone.

The Young Scientist Forum

The YS Forum takes place on Tuesday at 12.15 to 13.15h in room G8. Come along and meet your young scientist representatives, find out what the EGU does for young scientists and take the chance to become more involved in the Union. This forum is a great opportunity to let us know what you would like from the EGU, find out how you can get involved in the Assembly and meet other scientists in the EGU young scientist community.

Young Scientists’ Lounge

For the Young Scientists, on the Red Level of the conference centre you can find a place to take a break, grab a free coffee or soft drink and gather your thoughts away from the buzz of the Assembly. The lounge is also a great place to catch up with colleagues you haven’t seen in a while and perhaps strike up a new collaboration. On the notice boards you can find information about cultural activities on offer in Vienna. There is also the opportunity to provide feedback via suggestion boards.

Young Scientists’ Lounge

Young Scientist Reception and Medallist Reception

To bring together Young Scientists and past EGU-medallists, there will be a reception with drinks and light snacks. The reception take place on Tuesday 14 April, from 19:00 to 20:30 in room Y1.

This networking reception will provide an informal setting in which scientists can establish links with outstanding early career researchers and established scientists; offering an opportunity for young scientists to find answers to specific questions, which often cannot be found in your usual textbook. It offers a great opportunity for medallists to share their experience with researchers embarking on their academic career. To attend the reception, you need to register for the event in advance via this online form. Places at the reception are limited and will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. Your place is guaranteed only once you receive a confirmation email from the EGU Communications Officer, Laura Roberts.

Sessions for YS at the General Assembly

In addition to the above networking events, there are a number of other sessions catering the YS. A short list of these sessions with a strong YS focus can be found here. Of special interest are the two career workshops, focussing on: 1) Adding value to your research experience, and 2) Job applications and interviews. Note that you must register for the workshops in advance via the links provided!

What to see at EGU?: A Voyage Through Scales

ERE Matters April 5, 2015

A number of events will take place concerned with this year’s theme: A Voyage Through Scales. Zoom into a cloud. Zoom out of a rock. Watch the volcano explode, the lightning strike, an aurora undulate. Imagine ice sheets expanding, retreating – pulsating – while continents continue their leisurely collisions. Everywhere there are structures within structures … within structures. A voyage through scales is an invitation to contemplate the earth’s extraordinary variability extending from milliseconds to its age, from microns to the size of the planet. The range of scales in space, in time – in space-time – is truly mindboggling. Their complexity challenges our ability to measure, to model to comprehend.

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Lectures for a general geoscience audience (GL)

GL1 – A Voyage through Scales – Water in terrestrial systems by Kurt Roth: Tue, 14 Apr, 13:30–14:30, room Y1
GL2 – A Voyage through Scales – Archives of the Continental Crust by Chris Hawkesworth: Wed, 15 Apr, 13:30–14:30, room Y1

Theme exhibition

To illustrate this year’s theme, there are four exhibitions interpreting ‘A voyage through scales:

The scales of the General Assembly: experience the evolution of the conference during the week; space, time, and volume – the EGU2015 in numbers.
The scales of peer review: experience a voyage through the interactive quality assurance of EGU’s journals; space, time, and volume – watch peer review from a different perspective.
The scales in EGU journals: experience the beauty of science through the lens of our publications; impressions from this year’s photo book.
The scales in art: experience the dialogue between science and art; watch the artistic interpretation of the theme developing over the week.

Cover of the photo book for A Voyage Through Scales

Photo book

A high-quality photo book has been compiled and will be presented at the Assembly. Through the lens of our journals, scientists write about scaling in their disciplines and visualize their work through beautiful photos. The book is published by EGU and Edition Lammerhuber and will be handed-out to the participants upon registration.

Geomorphology Re-blog: Our EGU session died, what went wrong?

ERE Matters February 20, 2015

The EGU General Assembly 2015 is approaching, and with that a whole bunch of interesting new talks, posters and sessions! Or not!? What do you do when your proposed session has died because it simply did not attract enough submissions? Sabine Kraushaar did some session soul-searching and shared her advice on the Geomorphology Division Blog. Here’s what happened…

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“Have you ever had this experience? You develop a session which you think could be such a great platform or a subject that definitely interests a lot of people and then only a few people register…this happened to Jan, me, and several others this year and our proposed sessions (GM1.2 Emerging research fields in geomorphology and GM 1.4 Data wealth versus data poverty – new strategies for geomorphic research in a disparate world) died before they really came to life.

Andreas Lang (EGU Geomorphology President) offered advice when he told us the news and we wanted to share his ideas and comments with you and sincerely hope that they will help everyone to kick off his or her session ideas in the future! THANK you Andreas for the interview!!!”

‘Borrowed’ from the Geomorphology Blog

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Curious? Read the whole post here! 🙂

… and the winner is: OSPA Winner ’14

ERE Matters January 28, 2015

Every year, young students have the opportunity to compete for the Outstanding Student Poster Award (OSPA) at the EGU General Assembly. The OSP Award is intended to further improve the overall quality of poster presentations and, most importantly, to encourage younger colleagues in presenting their work in form of a poster.

Last year’s OSPA Winner in the Energy, Resources and Environment Division was Elisenda Bakker M.Sc. She is currently doing her PhD at the High Pressure and Temperature Laboratory of the Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University (the Netherlands). Her work is part of the European ULTimateCO₂ Program, aimed at increasing confidence in the long-term (i.e. after 1000’s of years after site closure) efficiency and safety of subsurface CO₂ storage.

We at ERE Matters invited Elisenda to explain the research that won her the OSPA last year! If this will trigger your curiosity, she will be presenting her most recent work at this year’s EGU General Assembly as well. And to all the young ERE scientists: give it a go yourself this year! Prizes include a conference fee waiver for the next EGU General Assembly and a publication free of cost to one of the EGU Journals. 🙂

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I’m grateful for receiving the ERE OSPA Award 2014, thanks! The work that has earned me the award is part of my PhD-research on the long-term effects of CO₂-exposure on the coupled chemical-hydro-mechanical behaviour of faulted clay-rich caprocks. My research is set in a larger consortium that investigates the feasibility of large-scale CO₂ storage in the European subsurface. As storage can only be considered when the CO₂ can be retained for the long-term, it is important to investigate the chemical effect, which is known to occur in the presence of CO₂, on the mechanical integrity of a potential reservoir-caprock storage facility. And particularly on fragile features such as (pre-)existing faults, which are known to be present in many reservoirs. I performed so-called shear experiments in the HPT-laboratory at Utrecht University to simulate slip along a fault surface, which I can use to get insights into the processes active in reservoir-scale slip movement along faults. Movement along a fault will not always result in earthquakes, and we want to know what the requirements are for the unstable slip regime in which earthquakes might occur when they nucleate in clay-rich caprock, specifically.

Schematic diagram showing a CO2 storage reservoir and overlying caprock, several km’s below the Earth’s surface, which are cross-cut by a fault.

This type of work really suits me as I felt, before I ended up doing this, that to me doing research was only valuable when the work that I would do, would contribute to our society. I could not do research for the sake of doing research, so when this research topic crossed my path I decided that this would be the perfect combination of doing scientific research and serving society by investigating the feasibility of a proposed solution to one of the major challenges mankind is currently facing.