This four-day summer school was held from the 18th to the 21st of July, 2022 in Zurich, Switzerland. It was co-organized by ETH Zurich and EPFL, with a strong focus on the fundamentals of fracture, friction, and elastodynamics and their application in the development of physics-based models of fault slip. Thirty international participants benefited from the expertise of world-renowned speakers while developing their research and presentation skills via poster sessions and workshops.
Organising Committee: Dr. Alexis Saez (EPFL*), Dr. Federica Paglialunga (EPFL*), Miguel Castellano Merino (ETHZ), Sofia Michail (ETHZ)
*Please note that the affiliations mentioned for the time of the summer school may have changed since then.

This six-month project was my MSc thesis, conducted in collaboration with the ETH Zurich at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in California, USA. The project's objective was to identify the physical and geophysical characteristics of permafrost in various areas of Alaska. This was done to enable field measurements for monitoring permafrost degradation.
The project entailed conducting a series of freeze-thaw experiments on restructured permafrost samples from Alaska within a controlled laboratory environment, with parameters such as humidity, temperature, and resistivity being meticulously monitored. The findings from these experiments have been incorporated into a scholarly paper titled "Geophysical Monitoring Shows that Spatial Heterogeneity in Thermohydrological Dynamics Reshapes a Transitional Permafrost System," which underscores the imperative for effective monitoring of transitional permafrost environments in the context of climate change.
MSc Thesis in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL)
Advisors: Prof. Dr. S. Uhlemann (LBNL*) , Dr. B. Daflon (LBNL**), Prof. Dr. H. Maurer (ETH Zurich)
*Currently at University of Bremen.
**Please note that the affiliations mentioned for the time of the thesis may have changed since then.
Understanding Arctic permafrost degradation through establishing thermo-hydrological/ geophysical relationships
Background Photo: LBNL in the morning by Sofia Michail


This three-month project was conducted in the MENA team part of the Exploration team of Total Energies SE in Tour Coupole in La Defense, Courbevoie, France in 2018. The project's objective was to process and combined geophysical and geological data to define the areas of interest for oil and gas exploration in the Cyprus region.
The project entailed detailed synthesis and integration of geophysical and petrophysical data, studies, well logs, and tectonics, seismic interpretation of 2D and 3D data in order ro achieve a tectonostratigraphic interpretation of the Eratosthenes Seamount region.