Professors Gabriel Lord and Sebastian Geiger from Heriot-Watt University are leading a strong academic and industry partnership to develop a new UK wide research network, Porous Media - Processes and Materials. This network will focus on issues affecting porous media flow, a topic which sits at the interface between engineering, biology, chemistry, physics, scientific computing and applied mathematics.
Involvement with PMPM will benefit both Schlumberger as well as PMPM students and staff through both knowledge and technology transfer. The establishment of PMPM will allow us to engage staff and students to solve challenging industrial problems in the exploration and production industry
Dr Simon Bittleston, Schlumberger Cambridge ResearchIndustry partners include Schlumberger, CMG Ltd, Total, British Geological Survey, Quintessa, Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, BLOSInternational and RPS.
Professor Sebastian Geiger of Heriot-Watt University €™s prestigious Institute of Petroleum Engineering said "This project will provide a platform to allow the best researchers in the UK from universities and industry to collaborate on large-scale societal and environmental challenges, not only related to the sustainable use and production of energy and drinking water, which are scientific areas in which the academic partners have a strong track record, but also transfer ideas and concept to other challenges such as improved models for simulating drug delivery in biological tissue or construction engineering." Professor Gabriel Lord from the Department of Mathematics added "Initially, the key areas of scientific research will include: large scale computational modelling, fundamental pore-scale physics, inverse problems and history matching, reservoir simulations, soil science and shallow ecosystems, theoretical biology and physiology, groundwater remediation, subsurface storage of greenhouse gases and nuclear waste, uncertainty quantification, homogenisation and multi-scale methods, visualisation, numerical analysis and random field modelling."
PMPM is holding its first meeting 31 January - 01 February 2013 in Edinburgh at the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences (ICMS). It will also run a series of Hot Topic meetings over the next three years attracting researchers, companies and students from across the UK.
The project will deliver specialised workshops, bringing together experts across the spectrum and the first workshop on Multiscale Inverse Problems is being run at the Mathematics Institute at the University of Warwick between 17 and 19 June 2013.
If you have an interest in traditional and emerging engineering applications, oil and gas extraction from geological reservoirs, carbon capture and storage, geothermal reservoir engineering, soil sciences, groundwater remediation and protection, biological engineering, food processing, fuel cells, nano-technology, construction engineering, wood processing or printing, and would like to know more, please visit the project website.