November 2018

Presentation skills – 2. Speech

Iris van Zelst November 28, 2018

I ... uh ... don't really know what to say here ... uh ... So I'll just let you read the blog post, right?
Credit: Pixabay

Presenting: some people love it, some people hate it. I firmly place myself in the first category and apparently, this presentation joy translates itself into being a good – and confident – speaker. Over the years, quite a few people have asked me for my secrets to presenting (which – immediate full disclosure – I do not have) and this is the result: a running series on the ...[Read More]

An industrial placement as a geodynamicist

Iris van Zelst November 23, 2018

This was one of the first image that popped up when I searched for 'industry' on google. Pretty isn't it? I don't think it's representative of working in industry though. Most likely you'll be behind a computer rather than staring at industry plants.
Credit: flickr

After years of trying to get a PhD, publishing papers, networking with professors, and trying to land that one, elusive, permanent job in science, it can be quite easy to forget that you actually do have career options outside of academia. To get a little taste of this, Nico Schliffke, PhD student in geodynamics at Durham University, tries out the industry life for a few weeks! When coming close t ...[Read More]

Thoughts on geological modelling: an analogue perspective

Editorial Team 3 November 15, 2018

Final stage of a sandbox analogue model of an accretionary wedge. University of Lisbon, 2009. Experiments published in Duarte et al. (2011).

In geodynamics we study the dynamics of the Earth (and other planets). We ground our studies in as much data as possible, however we are constrained by the fact that pretty much all direct information we can collect from the interior of the Earth only shows its present-day state. The surface rock record gives us a glimpse into the past dynamics and evolution of our planet, but this record gets spa ...[Read More]

Inversion 101 to 201 – Part 3: Accounting for uncertainty – Bayes and friends

Iris van Zelst November 7, 2018

You know you've commissioned a blog post about a good topic when there is an abundance of xkcd comics related to it.
Inverse theory exists to make the life of the mantle geodynamicist easier.

The Geodynamics 101 series serves to showcase the diversity of research topics and methods in the geodynamics community in an understandable manner. We welcome all researchers – PhD students to professors – to introduce their area of expertise in a lighthearted, entertaining manner and touch upon some of the outstanding questions and problems related to their fields. This time, Lars Gebraad, PhD s ...[Read More]