PhD position at GET/Toulouse/France : "DIMSCALE3D: Basin and subsurface water masses detection and imaging using high performance computing and joint inversion of seismic and potential data"

PhD project title: DIMSCALE3D: Basin and subsurface water mass detection and imaging using high performance computing and joint inversion of seismic and potential data

Funding: Doctoral grant of Region Occitanie and Federal University of Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées; gross pay: 1768 euros; net pay: 1414 euros.
Thesis supervisors and contacts:
PI : Dr. Roland Martin HDR, GET, 05 61 33 25 64 roland.martin$get.omp.eu Co-PI: Dr. Ing. Didier El Baz HDR, LAAS-CNRS, 05 61 33 63 03 elbaz$laas.fr

Project summary:
Due to current environmental and climatic issues, discovering, producing and managing new resources like underground water are major challenges. Our project aims at developing new tools for prospecting, monitoring and managing water and fluid contents at regional scales. The design and application of powerful imaging tools will be done at different spatial and temporal scales (basins and near-surface) by using multiple data, e.g., seismic, electrical and gravimetric data. This project involves altogether geophysicists of the Geosciences Environment Toulouse Laboratory (GET) and computer scientists and applied mathematicians of the Laboratory of Analysis and Systems Architectures (LAAS-CNRS). In order to estimate water contents at sedimentary and near-surface scales, we propose to improve, optimize and use imaging tools to invert simultaneously different data sets at different scales. This is a major challenge. The project falls within two priority research topics of the GET laboratory : 1)Georesources, Geophysics and Geodesy theme and 2) the priority axis of the University Paul Sabatier in Earth Sciences and High Performance Computing as well as one of the main axis of the Regional Competitiveness Pole AQUAVALLEY related to the identification and assessment of water resources.

Given the large volume of data to be processed, the optimization of parallel codes on our regional platform CALMIP or some local platforms like NUWA at OMP will make it possible to accurately estimate water contents. The calculations will be carried out with data collected at the controlled laboratory scale and at the scale of two pilot sites, i.e., the Saint-Lary Soulan basin (kilometric scale data) and a medium scale site on the Mediterranean coast using seismic data and gravimetric databases. The applications to the natural environment will be conducted under the supervision of experts in data acquisition and processing. In the medium term, we will be able to carry out systematic studies in the Pyrenees and monitor the transfer of water masses at local and regional scales.

Goals of the Ph.D. work:
The Ph.D. student will focus his efforts on:
1) The improvement, adaptation and optimization of numerical simulation (with high order numerical schemes) and High Performance Computing (HPC) data inversion codes for the modeling and coupling of different physics during inversions .
2) The application and validation of acoustic data inversion codes in a controlled laboratory environment
3) The introduction of a priori petrophysical and geological information during the inversion process at the scales of the subsurface and basins.

Required profile: Master's degree in Earth and Planetary Science, applied mathematics or civil engineering, preferably with an engineering degree( INSA, INP, ENSICA, ISAE,engineering schools, ...)
Scientific curiosity, interested in geophysical exploration, numerical simulation and parallel computing; faculties of teamwork. Strong background in finite elements, finite differences and finite volumes.

Skills: good to excellent level in Fortran90/2008 and/or C / C ++ code development on Linux; knowledge of MPI, OpenMP, CUDA, OpenACC or OpenCL; numerical simulation, parallel algorithms; experience appreciated in computing accelerators: GPU, Intel Xeon Phi or cluster computing.

Professional perspectives of the PhD student: know-how in the fields of numerical computation and high-performance computing (HPC); expertise in geophysics and civil engineering for private companies as well as the academic career at regional or international level.

Organisation:
Job location:
Laboratoire CNRS de Géosciences Environnement Toulouse - Université Paul Sabatier- Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées
14 avenue Edouard Belin
31400 Toulouse
France
Contact and application information