Plenary Sessions

14.45 - 15.30

Contourites and mixed depositional systems: a paradigm for deepwater sedimentary environments.

Professor Hernández-Molina is a specialist in sedimentary processes, seismic stratigraphy and basin analysis, and is experienced in core description and sediment structures identification. His research focuses on Deepwater Sedimentary Systems and the influence of bottom-current circulation along continental margins as well as the study of contourites and mixed depositional systems. He is leading "The Drifters" Research Group and a Join Industry Project (JIP) about "contourites and mixed depositional systems".

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14.45 - 15.30

Sustainable mining of critical raw materials: opportunities and obstacles for geoscientists.

Professor Hudson-Edwards is an environmental geochemist and mineralogist and a member of the Mining, Environment and Society group. She mainly works on the environmental impacts of mining and on sustainable mining practices. Specifically, she studies the mechanisms and products of contaminant cycling in mine wastes, ground and surface water, contaminated land and dusts, the development of remediation and management schemes for mine wastes, the global biogeochemical and health impacts of mining, and sustainable mining of technology metals and critical raw materials.  She joined the Environment & Sustainabilty Institute and Camborne School of Mines in October 2017. Prior to that she worked in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Birkbeck, University of London, for almost 20 years.

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14.45 - 15.30

The birth of the modern ocean and its first 180 million years of crises, speciations and extinctions.

Elisabetta Erba, full professor of Paleontology and Paleoecology, she is a micropaleontologist specialized in Mesozoic calcareous nannofossils used for dating marine sediments and for paleoceanographic reconstructions.  By examining the abundance, biodiversity, evolution, and biomineralization of fossil coccolithophores, her research aims to reconstruct past levels of atmospheric CO₂, understand paleoclimate variations, explore the ocean ecosystem dynamics and biosphere-geosphere interactions.

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