Mr Luca Laudi, an M.Sc. student at the Department of Geosciences, won the Best Student Presentation Award at the 3rd Conference of European Earthquake Engineering and Seismology (3ECEES) that took place in Bucharest, Romania, between 4 and 9 September, 2022. Luca鈥檚 presentation was entitled "Groundwater monitoring for the Maltese islands from ambient seismic noise correlations".
In addition, Luca was also awarded the IASPEI (International Association for Seismology and Physics of the Earth鈥檚 Interior) Early Career Award. Luca's research is sponsored by an Energy and Water Agency R&I grant, and forms part of the project SIGMA (Seismic Imaging of Groundwater for Malta鈥檚 Aquifers). The project is investigating the relationship between groundwater content in Malta鈥檚 rocks and the temporal variation of seismic wave velocities, obtained from the cross-correlation of ambient noise at stations of the Malta Seismic Network. The conference was also attended by Dr Sebastiano D鈥橝mico and Prof Pauline Galea, from the Department of Geosciences, who are supervising Luca鈥檚 dissertation together with Dr. Matthew Agius. A number of other oral and poster presentations were given by the group and other department members.
The joint conference brings together Europe鈥檚 seismologists and earthquake engineers every eight years. It combines the general assemblies of the European Seismological Commission (ESC) and the European Association for Earthquake Engineering (EAEE). Besides presenting the latest research results in seismology and earthquake engineering, the joint conference aims to foster a creative and stimulating environment for sharing and tackling the most challenging problems at the interface of these two fields, impinging directly on the minimization of losses from earthquake hazard in Europe and globally. This year鈥檚 conference was attended by more than 1,500 participants and was held in Bucharest鈥檚 impressive building of the Palace of Parliament.
