MIT Earth Resources Laboratory

Congratulations to ERL alum Hongyu Sun, who has been selected to receive the Society of Exploration Geophysicists’ J. Clarence Karcher Award at the IMAGE conference in August. The award recognizes “significant contributions to the science and technology of exploration geophysics by a young geophysicist of outstanding abilities.” Dr. Sun, who is now an Assistant Professor at UTEP - The University of Texas at El Paso, earned her PhD at MIT in 2022 working with professor and former ERL director Laurent Demanet in the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and the MIT Department of Mathematics.

Congratulations to Dr. Lubna Albarghouty! On April 21, 2026, Lubna successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled “Machine Learning-Primed Inference for Multiple-Event Location and Phase Association in Global Seismic Monitoring”. Her advisor was Dr. Sai Ravela of ERL and MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences

Congratulations to Dr. Jae Deok Kim! On April 17, 2026, Jae successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled “Physics-Based and Data-Driven Inversion of Magnetotelluric Data for Subsurface Imaging”. His advisors were Dr. Sai Ravela of ERL / MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and Dr. Rob Evans of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

Join us next Friday for a talk on structured decision-making by Remus Hanea and Tobias Klemm of ERL Founding Member company Equinor.

https://erlweb.mit.edu/events/fish-remus-hanea-equinor-u-stavanger/

MIT Energy Initiative highlights geothermal research at ERL and throughout MIT:

"To prepare for the upcoming symposium, MITEI organized a geothermal bootcamp during MIT’s Independent Activities Period (IAP) that introduced more than 40 members of the MIT community to geothermal basics, key technologies, and related MIT research. Carolyn Ruppel, MITEI’s deputy director of science and technology and the organizer of the IAP bootcamp and Spring Symposium, says, 'MITEI’s member companies, which represent leading voices on energy, power generation, infrastructure, heavy industry, and digital technology, are increasingly approaching us about their interest in next-generation geothermal. There is also good momentum building across MIT, ranging from projects at the Earth Resources Laboratory to the millimeter-wave testbed being developed by PSFC and its MIT collaborators, individual projects in academic departments, and of course the work MITEI has been funding.'"

Read more: https://erlweb.mit.edu/announcements/next-geothermal-energy-promise-progress-and-challenges/

MIT News features work on the Advanced Carbon Mineralization Initiative by ERL/EAPS postdoctoral associate Jonathan Simpson, Prof. Matěj Peč, Research Scientist Hoagy O'Ghaffari, and collaborators at ERL Founding Member company SLB / Schlumberger-Doll Research Center:

"To avoid the worst effects of climate change, many billions of metric tons of industrially generated carbon dioxide will have to be captured and stored away by the end of this century. One place to store such an enormous amount of greenhouse gas is in the Earth itself. If carbon dioxide were pumped into the cracks and crevices of certain underground rocks, the fluid would react with the rocks and solidify carbon into minerals. In this way, carbon dioxide could potentially be locked in the rocks in stable form for millions of years without escaping back into the atmosphere.

Some pilot projects are already underway to demonstrate such 'carbon mineralization.' These efforts have shown promising results in terms of successfully mineralizing a large fraction of injected CO2. However, it’s less clear how the rocks will evolve in response. As carbonate minerals build up, could they clog up cracks and crevices, and ultimately limit the amount of CO2 that can be stored there?

In a new study appearing today in the journal AGU Advances, MIT geophysicists explored this question by injecting fluid into rocks and using X-ray imaging to reveal how the rocks’ pores and cracks changed as the fluid mineralized over time."

Read more: https://erlweb.mit.edu/announcements/x-raying-rocks-reveals-their-carbon-storing-capacity/

In case you missed the February 13 FISH talk by Dr. Tianze Liu of WHOI, it is now available on our Youtube channel.

Video: Tianze Liu (WHOI): Seismic and borehole-acoustic observations of free-gas migration and tensile fracture growth during low-temperature peridotite alteration – MIT Earth Resources Laboratory Earth Resources Laboratory is part of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and the School of Science at MIT.

MIT News features work by ERL/EAPS Prof. Camilla Cattania and recent alum Dr. Yudong Sun.

New study unveils the mechanism behind “boomerang” earthquakes – MIT Earth Resources Laboratory An earthquake typically sets off ruptures that ripple out from its underground origins. But on rare occasions, seismologists have observed quakes that reverse course, further shaking up areas that they passed through only seconds before. These “boomerang” earthquakes often occur in regions with ...

Join us next Friday to hear about research relevant to carbon sequestration by Tianze Liu of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

https://erlweb.mit.edu/events/fish-tianze-liu-whoi/

Heading to the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in New Orleans? Be sure to check out some these presentations by ERL-affiliated researchers.

ERL at AGU 2025 – MIT Earth Resources Laboratory Planning to attend the American Geophysical Union’s Annual Meeting December 15-19 in New Orleans? Be sure to check out these presentations by ERL-affiliated researchers.