Keynote Speakers
Conference Speakers
Department of Geoscience
University of Padua, Italy
Giulio Di Toro is a Full Professor of Structural Geology at the University of Padua (Italy), Research Associate at the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV, Italy) and Fellow of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Italy).
He was Chair in Geology at Manchester University (2015-17), Enseignant Chercheur at Ecole Normale Superieure (2016, Paris) and player of the Italian national volleyball team (1991-93).
His research activity is aimed at understanding the earthquake cycle through geological fault surveys, laboratory experiments, microanalytical studies and numerical models. The research groups he led, also funded by the European Research Council for 4 M€ (years 2008-2019), involved up to 20 people of different nationalities, age (from B.Sci. students to senior scientists) and background (geologists, seismologists, engineers and geophysicists).
Thanks to the interaction with these researchers, the scientific activity has resulted in the publication of 135 papers, including the proposal of a general law for friction during earthquakes (Di Toro et al., Nature 2011) and the installation in Italy of two mutually complementary experimental machines dedicated to the study of the seismic cycle: SHIVA (INGV-Rome) and ROSA (University of Padua).
In recent years, his research group is also dealing with human induced seismicity (subsurface fluid storage, geothermal fields, etc.).
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Soil Mechanics Laboratory
EPFL, Switzerland
Dr. Alessio Ferrari is research associate and lecturer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland), and he is full professor of geotechnical engineering at the Università degli Studi di Palermo (Italy).
His current main research interests are in geomechanics for geo-energy systems, with focus on multiphysical testing and modelling of soils, shales and bentonites.
He is vice chair of the Technical Committee TC-308 “Energy Geotechnics” of the ISSMGE, and he is editor in chief for the journal “Geomechanics for Energy and the Environment”.
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GFZ-Potsdam, Germany
After finishing my PhD at ENS Paris in 2014, I continued my research on the coupling between metamorphic reactions and rock deformation at the University of Oslo, and subsequently at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Most of this research was covered by funding from the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation.
After three years in Bochum, I started my NERC Independent Research Fellowship atImperial College London in 2022. As of April 2024, I will join the GFZ Potsdam as a senior researcher.
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CNRS Hydrosciences
Montpellier, France
Linda Luquot (CNRS researcher at Geosciences Montpellier) is a doctor in Geosciences after training in physics and chemistry. She has developed her research on reactive transport processes in porous and fractured media applied to geoscience topics such as CO2 geological storage, seawater intrusion, managed aquifer recharge and karstic networks formation.
She won the Michel Gouillou-Schlumberger Academic Scientific Prize in 2022 for her work on CO2 geological storage.
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Earth, Ocean and Ecological Sciences
University of Liverpool, UK
I obtained my PhD in Experimental Rock Deformation at the University of Manchester and I am now Reader in Earth Materials and Director of the Scanning Electron Microscopy Shared Research Facility (SEM SRF) at the University of Liverpool.
I study geomaterials in the field and in the lab to understand how the mechanical and physical properties of crystals, and fluid-rock interactions influence earthquake processes, large scale tectonics and mantle flow. My research is underpinned by quantitative microscopy methods, such as EBSD, and by a multiscale approach that aims to link nanoscale phenomena to planetary scale deformation. I also direct my skills and expertise to timely research on critical mineral resources and carbon capture and storage in mantle peridotite.
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Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
The University of Manchester, UK
Dr Julian Mecklenburgh graduated from the University of Manchester with a BSc in Geology in 1996 after first trying and failing to do Physics. He then did a PhD on the rheology of partially molten granite under the supervision of Prof. Ernie Rutter in the Rock Deformation Laboratory at the University of Manchester.
After his PhD Julian did a postdoc at the Bayerisches Geoinstitut under the supervision of Steve Mackwell. He then returned to Manchester firstly as a NERC fellow then got a lectureship in 2011 and has been running the Rock Deformation lab at the University of Manchester since Ernie sort of retired.
Julian’s research spans permeability of mudrocks through to rheology of mantle minerals.
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Rock & Ice Physics Laboratory, Earth Sciences
University College London, UK
Professor Philip Meredith studies rock physics and geo-mechanics, including rock deformation and fracture, time-dependent deformation processes, brittle creep, fluid flow and permeability, micro-seismicity and acoustic emission, fracture healing and sealing processes.
He earned his PhD in Geophysics from Imperial College London (1983) on fracture mechanics of rocks before moving to University College London (UCL) in 1985, where he was later promoted to Full Professor of Rock Physics in 1995.
In 2003, he was an Elected International Fellow at the School of the Environment at Tohoku University (Japan), and he acted as the Head of the Earth Sciences Department at UCL from 2010 to 2014. He has led 32 major research grants from external funding bodies, has published over 180 peer-reviewed scientific studies, and has an H-index >60. In 2016, Professor Meredith was awarded the EGU Louis Neel Medal for “fundamental contributions to rock physics and geo-mechanics and international research integration.”
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Graduate School of Engineering
Kyoto University, Japan
Prof. Yoshitaka Nara earned his Ph.D. from Hokkaido University, Japan, in 2004. From 2004 to 2011, he has been a Postdoc in this university.
From 2008 to 2010, he has stayed in University College London as Honorary Research Associate. In 2011, he transitioned to Kyoto University, Japan, as Assistant Professor. Then he moved to Tottori University, Japan, as Associate Professor in 2014. Subsequently, he has been Associate Professor of Kyoto University from 2016.
During this trajectory, he has mainly studied time-dependent behaviour of rock, and published 35 papers from international journals with impact factors and 30 papers from Japanese journals until 2023. In addition, he has received 6 awards for his outstanding research achievements from esteemed organizations in Japan.
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Department of Geology
University of Otago, New Zealand
Dave Prior studied Geology at Aberystwyth University before a PhD at the University of Leeds, working on the Alpine Fault zone in New Zealand.
He did postdoctoral work on the microstructure of accretionary prism sediments at the Universities of Giessen and Leeds and in 1989 was appointed to a lectureship in the University of Liverpool. In Liverpool he focused on rock microstructure, started becoming an experimentalist moved a bit sideways into materials science.
In 2011 he moved to the University of Otago, this move coincided with his first research work on ice. Ice research started in the lab but has extended to include field glaciology and cryo-geophysics.
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University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Beatriz Quintal has been a senior lecturer at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, since 2013. She did her PhD (2010) and a postdoc at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Before that, Beatriz did her BSc and MSc studies in Brazil and worked as an engineer in the USA and in Mexico.
Her research is about hydro-mechanical properties of rocks, with particular focus on attenuation and dispersion of seismic waves associated with physical phenomena occurring in the pore fluid.
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Earth & Planetary Sciences Department
McGill University, Canada
Christie Rowe aims to understand controls on the timing and magnitude of earthquakes through studies of active faults and faults exhumed from the depths where earthquakes begin.
She is primarily a field geologist and also employs a variety of microstructural observation techniques. She has worked at University of Cape Town and McGill University, where she held the Wares Chair in Ore-Forming processes and a Canadian Research Chair in Earthquake Geology, before joining the University of Nevada Reno as Professor/Director of the Nevada Seismological Laboratory.
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École Centrale de Nantes, France
Dr Rubino is Associate Professor at École Centrale Nantes, France, since September 2022. His research interests focus on the study of dynamic ruptures of interfaces and faults.
Dr Rubino obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 2008 and his undergraduate degree from Politecnico di Torino, Italy.
After a brief experience in industry, he joined the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), first as postdoctoral scholar and then as research scientist.
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The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China
Teng-fong Wong is a research professor in Stony Brook University and professor emeritus in The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests are in experimental rock physics, fluid flow, and earthquake mechanics.
A fellow of the American Geophysical Union, he is a recipient of the Louis Néel Medal of the European Geosciences Union in 2010. He coauthors the monographs on “Experimental Rock Deformation, the Brittle Field” (with Mervyn Paterson) and “Rock Physics” (with Yong Chen and Enru Liu, in Chinese).
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Workshop Speakers
China Earthquake Administration
Affiliated Researcher
Kyoto University, Japan
Toshihiko Shimamoto demoted his career of about 50 years to the studies of fault and earthquake mechanics.
In particular, he pioneered a research area of high-velocity friction characterized by dramatic weakening of faults at high velocities.
He designed and built about 10 friction, deformation and fluid-flow apparatuses, including four different types of low to high-velocity friction apparatuses, and gave about 20 “design seminars” in Japan and abroad.
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More to come!
