News and Announcements

On April 8, 2025, Daniel successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled “Principal Slip Zones in Nature and Experiment and Their Role in the Earthquake”. His advisor was Prof. Matěj Peč of ERL and Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. read more…

This term the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences is offering a special seminar for MIT students taught by Professors Oli Jagoutz (director of ERL) and Matej Pec: 12.S591 “Seminar on Energy Transition – Geologic Hydrogen.” “Modern civilization relies on abundant and inexpensive energy. Carbon-based fuels currently supply approximately 60% of the 400 TWh… read more…

EAPS Professor of Geology Oliver Jagoutz has been named the new director of the Earth Resources Laboratory (ERL) effective January 15. Professor of Geochemistry Shuhei Ono has been selected to succeed him as the chair of the EAPS Program in Geology, Geochemistry, and Geobiology (PGGG), effective January 1. Founded in 1982, ERL has been a home for researchers across MIT studying the discovery,… read more…

In January EAPS will offer a special for-credit IAP class taught by ERL/EAPS Sr. Research Scientist Ben Holzman with E.J.M. Willemse and R.C.M.W. Franssen: 12.S590: Special Seminar in Geophysics – Geosciences and the Energy Transition Challenge The ‘Geosciences and the Energy Transition Challenge‘ course provides the participants with a broad understanding of technical, economic, and… read more…

Daniel Ortega-Arroyo, a student in Prof. Matěj’s Pěc’s lab in ERL/EAPS, received this year’s Student Author of the Year Award from the Journal of Structural Geology for a paper they co-authored entitled “A closer look into slickensides: Deformation on and under fault surfaces“. From the Journal of Structural Geology Website: “The Journal of Structural Geology… read more…

Ruben Juanes named American Physical Society Fellow by Stephanie Martinovich | CEE – Civil and Environmental Engineering • October 10, 2024 Ruben Juanes, professor in the Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) and Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) at MIT, has been elected a 2024 fellow of the American Physical Society (APS). Election to the… read more…

In the October issue of Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, new work by a team that includes former ERL Associate Director Dr Michael Fehler, ERL/EAPS Research Scientist Dr Nori Nakata, and former ERL postdoc Dr Yusuke Mukuhira (now on the faculty of Tohoku University): P–S Travel‐Time Detection and Hypocenter Location of Low‐SNR Events… read more…

New paper in Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering by recent ERL/CEE MSc alum Majed Almubarak, ERL Research Affiliate John Germaine, and ERL/CEE Prof. Herbert Einstein: “Fracturing Processes in Specimens with Internal vs. Throughgoing Flaws: An Experimental Study Using 3D Printed Materials“. “The fracturing behavior and associated mechanical characterization of rocks are important for many applications… read more…

New paper in Advances in Geo-Energy Research by recent MIT ERL/CEE alum Dr. Lluís Saló-Salgado (now a postdoc at Harvard), ERL/CEE Prof. Ruben Juanes, and collaborators from Norwegian research company SINTEF: “Three-dimensional simulation of geologic carbon dioxide sequestration using MRST“. “Physics-based computational modeling of subsurface CO2 migration constitutes the primary tool to assess geologic carbon… read more…

On June 21, 2024, Brindha successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled “Shifting Paradigms: Data-Centric Approach for Marine Statics Correction Using Symmetric Autoencoding”. Her advisor was Prof. Laurent Demanet of ERL, Dept. of Mathematics, and Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. read more…