European Research Space Research Articles

Young researchers waiting for the european research space

In this article, I discuss some of the thoughts and experiences I have had over the past decade both through my work at the ZA-EUROLAB1 and as a former Erasmus free mover student. The first idea I introduce concerns the necessary prerequisite for the enhancement of mobility in Europe: the harmonisation of qualifications. With the imminent entrance of the East European states into the EU this seems an increasingly pressing issue. Second, I address the need for interdisciplinary research in the social sciences. Third, I discuss the importance of interational vertical and horizontal networks. Finally, I highlight the role that institutions such as the ZA-EUROLAB have in addressing some of these issues. However, before turning to these topics, I would like briefly to discuss why research mobility in the early stages of one's career is so important for later mobility.

Introduction to Special Issue on Integrated Basin Studies (IBS) — a European Commission (DGXII) project

This issue contains papers issued from the Integrated Basin Studies Project (IBS) which is part of a larger program of the European Commission DGXII, entitled Geosciences II. The IBS project (EC contract JOU2 CT92 0110) originated in Geosciences consultation meetings, the first of them being held in Strasbourg in June 1989 under the auspices of Mr Hubert Curien, former French Minister for Research and Technology, and the subsequent meeting being held in Brussels. These consultation meetings have resulted in the conclusion that a main axis of future research in Geosciences should be the study of sedimentary basins, upstream of industrial activities, mainly the oil and gas industry but also water resources management, the mining industry, the storage of undesirable products and coastal engineering. They also resulted in the conclusion that future research on sedimentary basins should fulfill two requirements: integration of disciplines and modelling. Such a conclusion may now seem trivial but was not so generally accepted at that time. In this spirit, the IBS project was designed to provide the oil and gas industry with a new generation of models for basin formation, basin evolution and basin fill architecture from basin scale to reservoir scale. Its main objectives are the linkage of crust thermomechanical behaviour to basin formation and deformation mechanics and the corresponding modelling, the quantification of tectonic control on the sedimentary record and the analysis of compaction and mass and heat transfer. The IBS strategy is to link subsurface data to field data, and an important part of the project is devoted to thematic field studies in European sedimentary basins of different tectonic styles, taken as natural laboratories. Basin research has gone through a rapid evolution during the last decade, in particular through the development of new acquisition and processing methods for seismic data and advances in drilling technology. Modelling provides an important tool to analyse different aspects of basin formation processes and find their tectonic expression in the basin fill. The need for 3-D modelling techniques and models capable of linking processes operating on basinwide to subbasin scales is increasingly recognized and a significant effort has been made in the IBS project to develop a new generation of basin formation models coping with these needs (see also Cloetingh et al., 1993a; Van Wees and Cloetingh, 1994). As many data required to test these models reside in industrial companies, IBS has promoted a closer link between academic research and basin studies carried out by industry. The participation of the petroleum industry has been vital in this project and IBS has been able to establish a well functioning system of cooperation that not only facilitated data access, but most important, guaranteed the suitability of the end products of the project. This has led to an intensive exchange of modelling concepts and data sets between industry and academia. The IBS project has also used extensively the International Lithosphere Program Task Force Origin of Sedimentary Basins (See Cloetingh, Sassi and Task Force Team, 1994; Cloetingh et al., 1993a,b; 1994) to implement planning and to discuss preliminary results. It also builds partly on joint research through the European Commission TEMPUS and PECO Programs on Pannonian basin studies (Horvath, 1993; Van Balen and Cloetingh, 1995; Van Balen et al., 1995; Horvath and Cloetingh, 1995). A stimulating aspect of the activity of the IBS group is the creation of a research network in the corresponding field of knowledge which comprises now 30 teams belonging to eight European countries (England, France, Germany, Hungary, Norway, Spain, Switzerland and The Netherlands). This demonstrates the capacity of the procedures used by the DGXII of the European community to formulate a really European research space. PhD students and young researchers form an important component of the research groups