Young mineral scientists rock!

The EUROCORES program EuroMinScI inititiative holds its 2nd conference

What’s going on in the earth’s core, why are there magnetic anomalies in rocks, how is water incorporated in minerals, and how do pearls grow? These and many other important questions the mineral sciences engage in, were the topics of the 2nd EuroMinScI (European Mineral Sciences Initiative) Conference held in Giens, France, last April. The conference is a major annual event of the EuroMinScI Community, providing a venue for the participants to present their latest findings and key achievements within the programme and seeing what is cutting edge in the field.

The European Science Foundation’s EUROCORES (European Collaborative Research) programme EuroMinScI draws together different experimental techniques and computational activities into interdisciplinary integrated research projects addressing various aspects of mineralogy. Advanced atomistic computer simulations make it possible to predict mineral properties and behaviour. At the same time, these predictions are tested by in situ measurements of many mineral properties at extreme temperatures and pressures corresponding to those existing in the Earth’s deep interior.

Hence, one aim of the EuroMinScI programme is to provide young researchers with an academic background in Earth sciences with training in the physics-based simulation techniques, where the methods differ considerably from traditional Earth sciences. Therefore, the “Outstanding Young Scientists Awards” marked a highlight at the 2nd EuroMinScI conference, acknowledging and rewarding the efforts of the young scientists involved in the programme.

All of the work presented by the young scientists attending the conference was of immensely high quality, and the committee comprising of Professor Björn Winkler (University of Frankfurt), Professor Ulf Hålenius (Stockholm University), Dr. Kai Rankenburg and Dr. Michiko Hama (both ESF), was impressed by the intriguing findings of both the experimentalists and the theoretical modeling researchers.

The award winners of the conference were two experimentalists: Olga Narygina for the best oral presentation and Verity Borthwick for the best poster presentation. “These experiments are outstanding in a sense that they really allow us to understand observations which were hitherto not easily accessible” said Björn Winkler, chair of the scientific committee of the EuroMinScI Programme. Both of the award winners received a generous travel grant, which they can use for attending a meeting, or visiting another project team involved in the EuroMinScI Programme.