Welcome Kevin Frings!

We welcome our new team member Dr. Kevin Frings joining our team on April 1st 2024.

Kevin completed his PhD in thermochronometry and structural geology in summer 2023 at RWTH Aachen University in cooperation with PLUS University Salzburg . He will work in our new project on producing a new heat flow map of Switzerland, in collaboration with the Swiss Geological Survey at swisstopo.

Welcome Veronique Sieber!

We welcome our new team member Veronique Sieber joining our team on October 1st 2023.

Veronique completed her MSc studies in our Department of Earth Sciences at ETH Zürich in fall 2023. She will work in our project on evaluating clay occurrences in Switzerland for CO2-optimised cement production, in collaboration with the Swiss Geological Survey at swisstopo.

We are hiring!

Join our team for the position “Wissenschaftliche:r Mitarbeiter:in im Bereich Georessourcen (m/w/d)”, starting on 01.10.2023 or by agreement. You’ll find all the info in the official ETH job advertisment here.

Paper on a new approach to extract stratigraphic thicknesses from geological maps

We are happy to announce the paper by our team member Lukas Nibourel together with colleagues from the Swiss Geological Survey at swisstopo and from our group.

The paper presents an innovative approach to automatically extract orientation (dip direction/dip) and stratigraphic thickness from a 1:25′000 geological map vector data set of the Swiss Alps.

The approach is developed as a part of a mineral resources mapping project funded by swisstopo. It allows a rapid spatial overview on the orientation and thickness of a given geological unit over large areas. It is designed to support authorities and the industry in performing a rapid screening of a given region and to early identify promising areas for potential mineral extraction projects. Large-scale spatial overviews on the orientation and thickness of geological units are of large interest in many other disciplines such as tectonic and stratigraphic reconstruction, hydrogeological or geotechnical analyses.

Nibourel, L., Morgenthaler, J., Grazioli, S., Schumacher, I., Schläfli, S., Galfetti, T. & Heuberger, S. (2023). Automated extraction of orientation and stratigraphic thickness from geological maps. Journal of Structural Geology, 104865.

Geological 3D view of the southeastern test area with automatically and literature derived thickness values highlighted. Insets (b–e) show the distribution of automatically extracted and reliability-assessed thickness estimates and independent literature based thickness values.

Welcome Niklaus Kressig!

We welcome our new team member Niklaus Kressig joining our team on April 1st 2023.

Niklaus completed his MSc studies in our Department of Earth Sciences at ETH Zürich in fall 2022. Since then he worked as a trainee at the Office for Waste, Water, Energy and Air (AWEL) of Canton Zurich.
Niklaus will work in our HTC coal project, in collaboration with a Swiss industry partner, and in our forthcoming project on evaluating clay occurrences in Switzerland for CO2-optimised cement production, in collaboration with the Swiss Geological Survey at swisstopo.

Welcome Anja Amrein!

We welcome our new team member Anja Amrein joining our team on January 1st 2023.

Anja completed her MSc studies in Earth Sciences at the University of Lausanne in 2021. Since then she worked as trainee at the Swiss Geological Survey at swisstopo.
Anja will work in our hard rock aggregate project in collaboration with the Swiss Geological Survey at swisstopo. She will support us to automate the production of occurrences maps at the Switzerland scale and to manage the associated data.

Paper on 120 years of georesources research

We are happy to present here our groups’ paper on the applied georesources research history of the Swiss Geotechnical Commission (SGTK), our predecessor organisation. By reviewing the SGTK history with explaining some key exploration phases, we are discussing the challenges and chances of applied georesources research in Switzerland, somewhere between academic fundamental research and geological survey activites.

Heuberger, S., Nibourel, L., Fulda, D. & Vernooij, M. G. C. (2022). 120 years of georesources research in Switzerland: the Swiss Geotechnical Commission (1899-2018). Swiss Journal of Geosciences 115:10