Who are we?
ECOSSE is a Joint Research Institute that is part of a new £24M investment (by SHEFC, via the Scottish Executive and the Office of Science and Technology) in the Edinburgh Research Partnership in Engineering and Mathematics (ERPem), involving collaborative links in Mathematics and Science, between Heriot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh.
Six Joint Research Institutes (JRIs) comprise ERPem:
- Edinburgh Collaborative of Subsurface Science and Engineering (ECOSSE)
- Maxwell Institute for Mathematical Sciences
- Signal and Image Processing (SIP)
- Energy
- Institute for Integrated Systems (IIS)
- Civil & Environmental Engineering (CEE)
ECOSSE (the Edinburgh Collaborative of Subsurface Science and Engineering) combines expertise from the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh, the Institute of Petroleum Engineering at Heriot-Watt University, the British Geological Survey, and the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre. These partners form a strong, collaborative team whose rationale is that the earth’s subsurface plays a major role in the economic well-being of society, and hence warrants a focused effort to improve our understanding of the operative processes, and to develop new ways to sensibly use and interact with this part of our world.
The research scope of ECOSSE covers all fields in subsurface science and engineering, including: oil and gas recovery; groundwater quality; gas hydrate studies; the science and technology of carbon storage; and natural and anthropogenic hazards associated with subsurface engineering constructions. In its initial collaborative research programme, ECOSSE will address specific issues in carbonate reservoirs, seismic imaging of the subsurface, and petrophysics. Additional thematic programmes will be pursued later.