Honorary Argyris Lecture: Inga Berre

We are happy to welcoming you on site for the public Honorary Argyris Lecture of Inga Berre. Once a year, we award an Argyris Visiting Professorship to a leading personality in the field of simulation technology. With this award, we honor internationally renowned scientists from Germany and abroad, who are outstanding representatives of their disciplines in the field of simulation technology.

Process-structure interaction in geothermal reservoirs: modeling and simulation

Complex coupled processes occur in natural geothermal systems and result from injection and production of fluid in geothermal reservoirs. Fluid flow and heat transfer interact with rock mechanical deformations and shear-dilation, opening and propagation of fractures. Extension of fractures and changes in fracture aperture is again strongly coupled to flow and transport. This process-structure interaction occurs both related to natural convection processes in deep geothermal systems and during the development and operational phase of a reservoir when fluids are injected and produced. The coupled processes and their interaction with the fractured structure of the formation has a strong impact on the heat transfer in deep geothermal systems as well as on the outcome of fluid injection and production operations. In this talk, we discuss mathematical models and numerical approaches for coupled processes and process-structure interaction in geothermal reservoirs. Modeling examples will be discussed considering both natural and engineered systems.

Inga Berre

Inga Berre is professor at the Department of Mathematics and director of the Center for Modeling of Coupled Subsurface Dynamics (CSD) at the University of Bergen. Her main research interests are mathematical modelling, partial differential equations and numerical methods, motivated by simulation of coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical-chemical processes in geothermal systems and fault reactivation induced by subsurface injection and production. She is the principal investigator of the ERC Consolidator Grant: "Mathematical and Numerical Modelling of Process-Structure Interaction in Fractured Geothermal Systems" (MaPSI, 2021-2026). In 2023 she was named Argyris Visiting Professor at the SimTech Cluster of Excellence, University of Stuttgart.

Inga Berre has served in multiple elected leadership positions, including the SIAM Council (member, 2022-2024), SIAM GS activity group (chair 2021-2022), SET-Plan Deep Geothermal Implementation Working Group (co-chair, 2019-2021), and the Joint Program Geothermal, European Energy Research Alliance (chair, 2018-2021). She is member of the Scientific Advisory Council of GFZ (2024-2027) and the Advisory Board of SFB1313, University of Stuttgart (2018-). She is member of the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences (2017-). She is Associate Editor of Geothermal Energy, Springer (2020-) and Interpore Journal (2023-).

At the University of Bergen, Inga Berre is member of The University Board (2021-2025). She has served on multiple boards for the Research Council of Norway, including the Portfolio Board for Natural Science and Technology (2019-2023) and the Division for Science Board (2015-2019).

[Picture: Eivind Senneset for UiB]