EECinsights - Visitors and travels
The past two years have been difficult for travel and (physically) bringing together collaborators and colleagues. While internet communications and online interfacing tools have received major attention and refinement during this period and have enabled efficient collaborative work from miles apart (see Team Locations for our own situation during the pandemic), there is just something irreplaceable about being in the same 3-dimensional space.
While the pandemic is still not fully behind us, the summer of 2022 saw a significant ease on travel restrictions and costs for travellers, which enabled international collaborators to come together and long-postponed conferences to take place.
Visitors from Australia
During the last week of August, our team hosted two collaborators from Australia, our own former member Dr Asal Bidarmaghz, currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, as well as Prof Guillermo Narsilio from the University of Melbourne. Asal and Guillermo are both experts on ground modelling and geothermal energy technologies and discussed in-depth with the group about avenues of collaboration, specifically with the Subsurface Energy team. We visited the engineering campuses in West Cambridge and Trumpington street, in Cambridge, including a geotechnics lab visit at the Schofield Centre courtesy of our colleague Dr Alexandra Clarà Saracho, as well as the Alan Turing Institute, in London, which our team is affiliated with. A post-work picnic brought former and current EECi members together, for a long-overdue catch-up.
International Conferences
In addition to hosting collaborators, some of our team was able to attend conferences abroad. Dr Monika Kreitmair and Dr Nikolas Makasis, together with our visitors from Australia, attended the 16th International Conference of the International Association for Computer Methods and Advances in Geomechanics in Turin, Italy, hearing about advances in ground modelling, innovative geothermal technologies, and the need for uncertainty quantification in the field.
Our group lead, Prof Ruchi Choudhary, also attended a conference in South Korea, meeting up with former EECi member Dr Yeonsook Heo, currently Associate Professor at Korea University.
