Scholar highlights of September

We have asked the VISTA scholars to share their highlights of September. Thanks to Ashkan, Grace, Lars, Øystein and Malin for sharing.

Grace Shephard:

For 6 weeks in August-September I was fortunate enough to have sailed on the Swedish icebreaker Oden to the Central Arctic Ocean. Part of the trip was undertaken with the Canadian icebreaker the Louis S. St-Laurent as part of their extended continental shelf United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) claim. I shared the journey with a diverse and international scientific contingent under the direction of the Swedish Polar Secretariat, and an extremely hard-working crew. I was part of the sediment coring team and we retrieved over 100 meters of sediments at 13 sites including the remote localities of the Alpha Ridge and Nautilus Basin.

You can watch a fantastic youtube video summary of the expedition here:

along with one where I explain the coring process here:

The photo collage clockwise from left to right shows (1) me at the North Pole and Oden in the background, (2) polar bear, (3) daily helicopter flights for the ice-sampling team, (4) typical sunrise/sunset view from deck, (5) an opened core showing the variation in sedimentary layers, (6) reloading the core liner with the Louis in the background.

Grace Elizabeth shares here research highlights in her blog. Visit her blog at https://arctickoalablog.wordpress.com/arcticoceanexpedition2016/.

Visit Grace project page project page here.

 Lars Odsæter:

Thursday 22-23 September I attended Math meets Industry, a conference whose goal was to bring together PhD students and other faculty members from Norwegian Math departments with industry representatives. There were some really good plenary talks giving examples on how mathematics can be used for solving industrial relevant problems. This served as a good motivation for me. During the conference I presented some of my recent work in a poster session. In the evening the first Math Slam in Norway was arranged. Eight PhD students presented their work such that a general audience would follow. This was along the way with what Jo Røislien taught us at the VISTA scholar day. In fact, Jo was leading the show. I am really impressed with all the presentations, and this revealed that it is possible also for mathematicians to communicate their research. Friday there was a partnering event, were all participants got together to discuss in an informal way in what areas and how mathematics can be used in industry. This was a good opportunity to meet new fellows both from academia and industry. All together I think the conference was a great success, and I hope for a similar event also next year. More information, including posters and the Math Slam presentations, can be found at www.ntnu.edu/mathmeetsindustry/.

Visit Lars' project page project page here.

Ashkan Jahanbani:

I am invited as a speaker to present my research results at Schlumberger 2016 Enhanced Oil Recovery Workshop: “EOR New Frontiers”, 3-5 October, Abingdon, Uk. The topic of my talk is:

Simulation Study of Application of a Water Diverting Gel in Enhanced Oil Recovery.

Visit Ashkans project page here.

Øystein Langangen:

I have attended the ICES (International Council for the Exploration of the Seas) Annual Science Conference. The conference was held in Riga, Latvia from 19.-23. September. There were 661 participants from 37 countries attending. I gave an oral presentation about my work on shifts in spawning ground use in Northeast Arctic Haddock, which is a major contribution to the VISTA project I am affiliated with. The presentation was well received and I got very useful feedback on my work.

Visit Øystein project page project page here.

Malin Waage:

I participated and presented a poster with the title “High-resolution 3D seismic investigation of giant seafloor craters and pingos in the Barents Sea” last week at the GIMS13 (Gas in Marine Sediments) international conference that was hosted by CAGE in Tromsø. Here, geologists, biologists, microbiologists, geophysicists, oceanographers, geochemists and scientists from modelling disciplines, as well as industry gathers to promote the study of natural gas and release systems on global scale. It was a very interesting, educational and fun conference! I was lucky to get a reward for best PhD poster in the group “Geophysics for gas hydrate and fluid flow prospecting”.

Last week we also had a very successful P-Cable seismic processing workshop with geophysics in CAGE, P-Cable AS and DECO (the processing software company) to discuss recent acquired seismic P-Cable data, scientific work in progress using P-Cable, new processing applications and problems/solutions that have risen.

Next week, 3-9 October me, and a bunch of others from CAGE are participating on an AMGG (Arctic Marine Geology and Geophysics) field trip to Sicily, Italy!  Looking forward to some sun and warm weather J  

 Visit Marlins project page project page here.