Two ERC Advanced Grants go to researchers at ENAC
Professors Lyesse Laloui (left) and Anders Meibom (right). © 2018 EPFL
Professor Lyesse Laloui, in civil engineering, and Professor Anders Meibom, in environmental engineering, were awarded an ERC Advanced Grant, the most prestigious European grants to individual researchers.
Project: BIOGEOS - Bio-mediated Geo-material Strengthening for engineering applications
Researcher: Lyesse Laloui, Full Professor, Director of Laboratory of Soils Mechanics (LMS), EPFL
The BIOGEOS project puts the focus on bio-mediated soil improvement. It aims to engineer a novel, natural material under controlled processes, for ultimately providing solutions to real problems in the geo-engineering and geo-energy fields by advancing knowledge around complex multi-physical phenomena in porous media. The bio-cemented geo-material is produced through the bio-mineralization of calcite bonds, which act as natural cementation for endowing the subsurface with real cohesion and increased resistance. The development of such a bio-mediated technology will lead to innovative applications in a series of engineering problems such as the restoration of weak foundations, seismic retrofitting, erosion protection, and the enhancement of heat transfer in thermo-active geo-structures.
- A bacterial powder for quickly stabilizing gravel surfaces, 2018/01/23, EPFL News
- Laboratory of Soil Mecanics
Project: UltraPal - Ultimate Paleo-Ocean Records from Biogenic Calcites
Researcher: Anders Meibom, Full Professor, Director of the Laboratory for Biological Geochemistry (LGB)
The oceans are key to the evolution of Earth’s climate. Understanding global climate change therefore requires proxies to establish past ocean conditions with high accuracy. Calcium carbonate produced by living organisms and stored in ocean sediments has played a fundamental role in these efforts because its composition is related to ocean conditions at the time of their formation. However, sediment processes can subsequently modify these carbonates and bias the paleo-environmental information. The UltraPal project will study and quantify these processes, in order to optimize paleo-ocean reconstructions.