Major European grant for innovative research into the nucleation of earthquakes

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded an ERC starting grant of €1.5 million to Dr André Niemeijer. This prestigious European grant is designed for promising researchers doing excellent, innovative scientific research.

In the next few years, Niemeijer will focus on rock-friction processes, which largely determine eventual earthquake magnitudes. He will perform friction experiments in Utrecht University’s High Pressure and Temperature Laboratorium , with very sophisticated equipment simulating earthquake conditions in the earth’s crust down to 20 km depth. Integrating these laboratory experiments with small-scale and large-scale numerical modelling will enable better estimates of potential earthquake magnitudes in certain high-risk areas.

Melting rock in the laboratory (slow motion)

André Niemeijer

André Niemeijer (1977) has worked at the Faculty of Geosciences since 2010. He graduated in geochemistry from Utrecht University in 2001 and obtained his PhD in geology from the same university in 2006. From 2006 to 2009 he worked as a researcher at Pennsylvania State University (USA), partly funded by a Rubicon grant (NWO), and then moved to the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) in Rome, Italy. He has worked at Utrecht University, funded by a VENI grant (NWO), since 2010. In 2012, André was awarded the Young Outstanding Researcher Award, European Geosciences, Union Division Tectonics and Structural Geology. 

ERC starting grant scheme

The European Union’s ERC grant scheme has a substantial budget for supporting pioneering research initiated by excellent up-and-coming researchers.

Faculty of Geosciences: a sustainable Earth for future generations