Marcel Moura personal page

Theses

My Master's thesis entitled "Vortex motion around a circular cylinder both in an unbounded domain and near a plane boundary" can be found here and my PhD thesis entitled "Burst dynamics in quasi-2D disordered systems: experiments on porous media two-phase flows" is here.

News

• We were happy to receive the visit of the French Minister of Higher Education and Research Sylvie Retailleau in the lab, click here for more info.

• We worked on the development of sci-art exhibition 𝐏𝐎𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐒 𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑 - 𝐕𝐨𝐢𝐝 𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐬, 𝐈𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐒𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐭𝐲 (more info here) in collaboration with the art curator Mirela Vladuci. The exhibition is hosted by the MV Sci-Art center in Timisoara, Romania and happens in the context of Timisoara being chosen as the 2023 European Capital of Culture. I'm happy to have contributed to this project and to have had two experiments turned into art works for the exhibition. You can read more about the POROUS MATTER Sci-Art exhibition here.

• If you have made coffee, you have made a flow in porous media experiment. Check out our latest popular science article in Titan about the interesting connections between coffee brewing and porous media science. If you are more into tea, you might prefer this one.

• Our project FlowConn: Connectivity enhancement due to thin liquid films in porous media flows was selected for funding by Research Council of Norway under the scheme "Researcher Project for Young Talents". I'm very happy to hear that we will be able to continue this very interesting line of research. This project is derived from a work I initiated during my PhD where we investigated how thin liquid films can introduce new transport pathways inside porous networks. 

• We have launched a virtual art gallery at PoreLab! You can have a look at some of the work performed by several of the researchers in our group there.

• I am one of the organizers of the Porous Media Tea Time Talks (PMTTT). Check out our YouTube channel for an exciting collection of talks given exclusively by early-career porous media scientists.

• I was recently interviewed by TV Jornal SBT (Brazil). I have spoken a little bit about some of our research activity in Norway. I have shown the TV friendly Flying Chain experiment and also commented how the motion of air through a facemask really is a problem of flow in porous media.

• Slow drainage flows in porous media often present a very interesting intermittent invasion dynamics. This was the topic of a paper we recently published in Frontiers in Physics. This dynamics can be seen in a fun kitchen experiment using a teabag! Titan has published a popular science article where I explain how this can be done.

• I made a little Geogebra applet to integrate the SIR equations used in the modeling of a pandemic. This tool is published openly and the user can tune the model parameters using a slider. It is very convenient to see how a reduction in the reproduction number R0 leads to the flattening of the infection curve.

• A popular science article was published about our research on the flying chain. We also recorded a video to help with the explanation. This is a very curious effect, almost impossible to believe that a long chain dropped from a given height would behave that way. Good fun!

• The flying chain takes off once again! Our paper on the mechanisms of the flying chain fountain just got published in Frontiers in Physics. We have analyzed numerically, theoretically and experimentally the physics of a pretty weird Youtube viral video. Science communicator Steve Mould showed that a chain of metallic beads moves in a most unexpected manner, when dropped from a container at a given height. We have shown that the structure and dimensions of the chain and container play an important role in this curious system.

• I was honoured to receive an InterPore Rosette award "in recognition for sustained and valuable services to The International Society for Porous Media". The award was given during the 10th International Conference on Porous Media and Annual Meeting of InterPore which took place in New Orleans, USA on May 2018.

• Here's a popular science article about our paper published in PRL : https://titan.uio.no/node/2529

• In connection with the Student Affairs Committee of InterPore, I have helped to organize a set of activities for the students, postdocs and early career researchers during the 10th InterPore meeting in New Orleans, USA. A description of those activities can be found here.

• Big news! Our paper “Verification of a dynamic scaling for the pair correlation function during the slow drainage of a porous medium” has just been published by PRL (Physical Review Letters). In this paper we have experimentally verified a 30 years long prediction about how the relative probability of invasion of a pore in a porous medium varies with space and time. The article has been published as Open Access (free for all!) and can be found here.

• I am now collecting contributions for our recently created Gallery of Porous Media Art. This is a free space dedicated to the divulgation of stunning images and videos related to porous media research. If you would like to collaborate with material for the gallery, please contact me.

• Our article “Critical behavior in porous media flow” has been published by EPL (Europhysics Letters). This was project in which we have addressed the statistics of burst invasion events in porous media and also the power spectrum of pressure fluctuations associated with the bursts. You can find the article here.

(Last update: 19/02/2025)