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30/09/2019

A total of 15 Mandela University honours’ and masters’ geosciences students were recently exposed to French experts when they attended a five-day short course followed by a two-day fieldtrip in geodynamics and continent-ocean connectivity in Southern Africa, in line with the University’s Ocean Sciences vision. The course was open to postgraduate students at South African universities.

The course presenters included Prof Moctar Doucouré and Dr Bastien Linol of AEON (Africa Earth Observatory Network) as the Earth Stewardship Science Research Institute at the University, Dr Daniel Aslanian from the French Institute for the Exploration and Exploitation of the Sea (Ifremer) and Dr Marina Rabineau from Université de Bretagne Occidentale (UBO) in France. 

Drs Aslanian and Rabineau are research directors in their respective institutions and internationally recognised experts in their fields of marine geoscience.

They contributed to bringing a global perspective to students’ learning and the applications of acquisition and modelling techniques to understanding the southern African margins with emphases on sedimentation and deep structures.

Another contributor to the course was Dr Romain Pellen, a postdoctoral researcher at Ifremer who is on a three-month postdoc at Mandela University.

This is the second year the course has been presented, with the inclusion of a field trip in the Gamtoos Valley during which students are trained to link learnings during the course with observations in the field.

Students were also introduced to the interpretation of marine seismic profiles using the Oil & Gas exploration industry software known as Kingdom Suite for Geoscience. The software has been granted by the Global Energy software company IHS Markit to Nelson Mandela University through Prof Doucouré for teaching and research purposes.

The course is being developed as an EOL (Earth and Ocean Link) Winter School.

Geosciences honours’ and masters’ students attending the five-day short course in geodynamics and continent-ocean connectivity in Southern Africa are joined by Mandela University presenters Prof Moctar Doucouré (centre front) and Dr Bastien Linol (back), Dr Marina Rabineau from Université de Bretagne Occidentale in France (front right) and Drs Daniel Aslanian and Romain Pellen from the French Institute for the Exploration and Exploitation of the Sea (Ifremer) (back right).

Contact information
Prof Moctar Doucouré
Associate-Professor
Tel: 41 504 4611
Moctar.Doucoure@mandela.ac.za