Next Generation
Researchers

Several Networking Activities within the GEOLAB project are targeted at educating and training the Next Generation (NG) of researchers and engineers. These candidates will acquire the ability to better assess the added value of physical modelling and use the physical modelling tools in combination with data and numerical modelling for science and engineering.

Free Access to GEOLAB

Gain access to the GEOLAB research facilities

The GEOLAB Research Infrastructure is open for ground-breaking research and innovation by academic and industry users outside the consortium, the so-called transnational access. The access is funded from the EU project budget and includes technical & scientific support and training of the users.

In total 40 experiments are foreseen in the following rounds of calls for proposals:

Experiments that proof innovative solutions to enhance the resilience of the Critical Infrastructure (CI) in Europe (opening 9 June 2021, deadline 10 October 2021).
Experiments to study the pressures on CI, e.g., impact of climate change, aging, increased usage, extreme weather events and geo-hazards (opening expected in June 2022).
Experiments to validate advances in numerical modelling and data science leading to a better engineering design (opening expected in June 2023).

GEOLAB's First Event

On 2 and 3 December 2021 we had our first “NextGeneration Training Workshop” in the framework of the GEOLAB project.

The workshop was held in CEDEX in Madrid. We had 69 enthusiastic participants, 45 followed us online and 15 participants were funded by the GEOLAB project.

The main goal of this series of workshops is to provide a platform to learn and exchange ideas about the fundamentals and state of the art of sensing and actuation techniques for physical modelling in geotechnics.

We had a number of lectures in 2 days given by professors and researcher from the GEOLAB consortium.

Find Slides from the event in the Attachments section below:

December 2, 2021 (Thursday)

Interactive lecture that considers model design, scaling laws, data acquisition and interpretation methods in a form that helps participants in planning their own experiments carried out by Prof. Anastasopoulos (ETH Zurich).

Finally, a workshop where the participants learn how to plan experiments in different scales, how to acquire relevant data and how to process them – Prof. Dr. Luc Thorel (Universite Gustave Eiffel) and Prof. Dr. Hauke Zachert (Technical University of Darmstadt)

Followed by an interactive lecture that covers the technique specific concerns associated with sample preparation, camera choice, lighting, interpretation, and potential pitfalls to be avoided by Dr.Sam Stanier (University of Cambridge).

December 3, 2021 (Friday)

Presentation of two case studies using PM to tackle the effects of climate change, geo-hazard and aging on CI conducted by Dr. Suzanne van Eekelen (Deltares) and Dr. José Estaire (CEDEX).

Following that, lectures providing examples of interaction between physical modelling, element testing, and numerical modelling are presented by Dr.Amin Askarinejad (TU Delft), Dr.Stefano Muraro (TU Delft), Prof. Eduardo Alonso (UPC Barcelona).

Attachments

Find further details in the agenda here:

Workshop slides (Part 1)

Workshop slides (Part 2)