Lorenz G. Straub Award and InterPore’s Kimberly-Clark Distinguished Lecture
Distinguished Speaker: Ruben Jaunes, Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts institute of Technology.
Abstract: The displacement of one fluid by another in a porous medium gives rise to a rich variety of hydrodynamic instabilities. Beyond their scientific value as fascinating models of pattern formation, unstable porous-media flows are essential to understanding many natural and man-made processes, including water infiltration in the vadose zone, carbon dioxide injection and storage in deep saline aquifers, methane venting from organic-rich sediments, and fracturing from fluid injection. Here, we review a handful of these hydromechanical instabilities, elucidate the key physics at play, and point to modeling frameworks that permit quantitative assessments of their impact at the geologic scale.
About the Distinguished Speaker: Ruben Juanes is professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT, where he has been since 2006. He is an expert in fluid flow through porous media and in geomechanics, and has applied his research to the fields of energy resources, carbon capture and storage, gas hydrates, water infiltration and soil irrigation, and induced seismicity. He holds an undergraduate degree from University of A Coruña (Spain) and graduate degrees from UC Berkeley, all in Civil and Environmental Engineering. He is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and is the 2024 InterPore Kimberly-Clark Distinguished Lecturer.
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