Chi and Dr. Michael Behm (University of Oklahoma) visited Lawrence Montessori School on Wednesday July 11th, 2018 to give the kindergarten kids a presentation and a field demonstration on monitoring earthquakes using geophones. The interaction with these kids was super fun.  They asked a lot of good questions like 'can you still record earthquake if it is happening in another country?' 'what should we do if we experience an earthquake?'. Chi enjoyed the morning spent with these brilliant kids.

Congratulations to Fan Zhang and Ling Peng! The Society of Petrophysicists and Well Log Analysts Foundation has awarded Fan and Ling a grant as well as a scholarship for the 2018-2019 academic year. This award is in recognition of graduate students' academic accomplishments and career pursuits. Our group member James Colgin also received this award last year. 

Chi is the recipient of 2018 J. Michael Young Academic Advisor Award, which recognizes an outstanding faculty or academic staff member in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences for exemplary advising of undergraduate students. 

Chi was invited to give a talk at CPS/SEG 2018 conference in Beijing, China. Chi also took the opportunity to visit PetroChina research institute in Hangzhou, China University of Geosciences (Beijing), Institute of geology and geophysics, Chinese Academy of SciencesChina, and School of Earth and Space Sciences at University of Science and Technology of China. It was a great and productive trip.

We revisited Konza Prairie during the past weekend to take borehole NMR measurements in wells along our ERT and surface NMR profiles from September last year. The weather was really harsh but the crew did a fantastic job!  

During Spring break, Chi did a field test in Santa Rosa using cross borehole ERT to characterize the in situ enhancement of biodegradation of petroleum hydrocarbons in soil and groundwater using BECS system. ​

We hosted Dr. Norbert Klitzsch from RWTH-Aachen at KU on April 4th and 5th. Dr. Klitzsch gave the departmental colloquium talk on small scale ERT measurements as well as NMR measurements in the vadose zone. 

​Norbert’s research interests are the physical properties of porous media. Since his doctoral dissertation (PhD thesis) he has been studying electromagnetic rock properties, in particular the NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) and SIP (spectral induced polarization) properties of rocks. Besides the physics of these methods he is mainly interested in the application of (not only) these geophysical methods for deducing rock properties.

Chi, Fan, James, and Qifei all presented at 2018 annual Kansas Interdisciplinary Carbonates Consortium meeting on March 12th and 13th, 2018.
1. Characterization of pore structure in carbonate rocks using geophysical tools - a multi-scale integrated approach.
2. Numerical simulation of electrical properties of carbonate reservoir rocks using micro-CT images
3. Resistivity and permeability of carbonate rocks: influence of mineral precipitation and dissolution
4. Joint inversion of NMR and complex conductivity data on estimating pore size distribution in carbonate

We also gave the conference attendees a tour of our lab. 

Chi gave a talk, 'Using geophysical tools to characterize pore structure and flow properties in subsurface', in the Dept. of Geology at Kansas State University on International Women's Day. Chi dedicated one slide in her presentation to celebrate women's day. The discussion with faculty and students on carbonate diagenesis was very interesting.  

Our visiting student Ling Peng, a 2nd year PhD student from China University of Geosciences, has been selected as a grant recipient for the 2018 AAPG Grants-in-Aid Program. This year the Foundation received more than 340 applications from across the world. The AAPG Foundation’s Grants-in-Aid program selected 124 grant applicants to receive a total of $285,000 in geoscience grant funds. Ling applied for this scholarship with KU's endorsement. Congratulations, Ling!