The InterRidge Student and Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme continues to play an important role in the careers of early career ocean scientists. There was a high number of proposals submitted again this year and we awarded four InterRidge-funded Fellowships, together with one Fellowship for students from developing countries, supported by the ISA Endowment Fund.
The recipients of this year's InterRidge Fellowships are:
Simone Pujatti - a PhD student at the University Drive Nortwest in Calgary, Alberta, Canada
A. Srinivas Rao - a PhD Student at the National Center for Antarctica and Ocean Research, India
Loes van Dam - a PhD Student at the University of Rhode Island, USA
InterRidge/ISA Endowment Fund Fellowships were awarded to:
Unyime Udoudo Umoh - a PhD Student at School of Ocean and Earth Science, Tongji University Shanghai, China
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Simone Pujatti
I am an Italian PhD student at the University of Calgary, where I am a member of the Reactive Transport Group, working under the supervision of Dr. Benjamin Tutolo. Our research team aims to investigate hydrothermal systems in the shallow Earth and on other planets, characterize mineral reaction rates and test the feasibility of the storage of CO 2 in geological formations. I started my studies at the University of Padova (Italy) where I received a bachelor’s degree in Geological Sciences. I then felt the need to explore different perspectives on science and moved to the Netherlands, where I completed a master’s degree in Earth Sciences at Utrecht University with a thesis that investigated the generation and healing of porosity during pseudomorphic replacement reactions, supervised by Dr. Oliver Plümper. The focus of my PhD research is about water-rock interactions in the oceanic lithosphere, specifically serpentinization reactions, ore-forming processes at seafloor hydrothermal vent deposits and silicification reaction in Archean komatiite rocks. I approach these issues with a combination of petrographic and geochemical methods, including but not limited to SEM, FIB-SEM, EMPA, confocal Raman microscopy, μ-CT, ICP-MS, titrations, geochemical and reactive-transport modelling. The funds granted by the InterRidge Fellowship allowed me to return to Utrecht University to perform ultra-high resolution FIB-SEM tomographic imaging analysis of the porous network found in serpentinized peridotites. The analysis was successful and recorded the presence of a highly anisotropic nanoporous network. These results have been presented at AGU 2019 and a manuscript is under preparation for publication in scientific journals.
Here you can read Simone's report from his stay at Utrecht University (The Netherlands).
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Unyime Udoudo Umoh
Unyime U. Umoh is from Ikono LGA of Akwa Ibom State, a coastal region in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. He graduated in Marine Chemistry and completed his M.Sc degree in Organic Geochemistry from University of Calabar. At present, he is completing his PhD studies in Marine Organic Geochemistry from School of Ocean and Earth Science, Tongji University Shanghai China under the supervision of Prof Li Li. Mr Umoh is the founder of Atlantis Oceanographic Society, a non-profit organisation aims at undertaking oceanographic researches.
In 2015, Mr Umoh was awarded At-Sea Training Program by International Seabed Authority Jamaica with the German Deep-Sea Mineral Exploration team (BGR). In 2016, Umoh was awarded Marine Scholarship of China for his PhD studies. Recently, Mr Umoh has visited many geochemical laboratories including Federal Institute of Geoscience and Natural Resources (BGR) Germany, Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (GEOMAR), University of Kiel Germany, Royal Netherlands for Sea Research (NIOZ) and Organic Geochemistry Unit, Bristol University UK for research/laboratory exchange programs. His research interest is to investigate the organic and petroleum geochemistry of deep-sea hydrothermal vent systems.
In line with his research focus, Mr. Umoh has participated in series of deep-sea expeditions notably INDEX2015 and 2017 BGR Deep Sea Mineral Exploration to Indian Ocean with RV Pelagia and Sonne respectively (Chief Scientist: Ulrich Schwartz-Schampera). Mr Umoh major science analytical skill is chromatographic techniques including GC, GC-MS, GC-IRMS and LC-MS. In 2018, Mr Umoh was awarded InterRidge/ISA Endowment Fund Fellowship to expand his expertise in lipid biomarker compounds in deep-sea hydrothermal system of Central and Southeast Indian Ridges and to establish new collaboration with the Organic Geochemistry Unit at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom under the supervision of Dr. David Naafs. The collaboration yielded significant success in the study of organic compounds of the hydrothermal environment including scientific journal publications.
Here you can read Unyime's report from his stay at University of Bristol (United Kingdom).
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Loes van Dam
While I am originally from The Netherlands, I grew up in California and learned about the basics of plate tectonics from a practical standpoint at a very young age – my childhood home is located only 30 kilometers away from an active fault. Pursuing these interests, I received a Bachelor’s degree in Geophysics from Texas A&M University in 2015. Through my coursework, I discovered how engaging research, and especially scientific modeling, can be. This led me to the University of Rhode Island (URI), where I am now working on a PhD with Dr. Chris Kincaid. We have built a laboratory apparatus that allows us to model complex plate motions and mantle flow patterns at mid-ocean ridges. This research has been presented at conferences in the USA and in Europe. The InterRidge Fellowship offered me the opportunity to work with Dr. Clinton P. Conrad and Dr. Fabio Crameri at the University of Oslo (UiO) to develop numerical models of these same mid-ocean ridge processes, and to expand this research beyond the capabilities of the laboratory model at URI.
Here you can read Loes's report from her stay at University of Oslo (Norway).
