Site Maintenance will take place from 4:00 PM on 2024-04-29 to 9:00 AM on 2024-05-01.
Please do not make any content change during this time, otherwise all the changes will be lost.

Researcher

Dr Bhavik Lodhia

Fields of Research (FoR)

Geodynamics, Structural Geology, Geology not elsewhere classified, Geophysics

Biography

I am an Honorary Lecturer at UNSW and am an IWY Fellow/Research Scientist at CSIRO. I am part of the CSIRO Hydrogen Industry Mission and the Environment team. I also work with the Energy team on a range of projects, including natural hydrogen exploration, fluid migration modelling, risk to groundwater and more. Before this role, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher at UNSW and focused on coupling fluid flow and basin evolution. The highlight of my...view more

I am an Honorary Lecturer at UNSW and am an IWY Fellow/Research Scientist at CSIRO. I am part of the CSIRO Hydrogen Industry Mission and the Environment team. I also work with the Energy team on a range of projects, including natural hydrogen exploration, fluid migration modelling, risk to groundwater and more. Before this role, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher at UNSW and focused on coupling fluid flow and basin evolution. The highlight of my time at UNSW was developing an algorithm to rapidly calculate basin-scale vertical fluid velocities for a range of fluids, including CO2 and hydrogen. This was recently published in Nature Scientific Reports.

Before joining UNSW, I completed a PhD and was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Geology and Geophysics at Imperial College London and gained an undergraduate masters degree in Earth Sciences from the University of Oxford. I am also a fellow of the Geological Society of London, American Geophysical Union, European Geosciences Union and a keen caver/outdoors explorer.

My wider research interests include geodynamics, mantle convection, basin evolution, carbon capture and storage, low-carbon technology and sedimentary source to sink processes.

I am always keen to explore new avenues of research and collaborations with domestic and international partners.


My Grants

2019: £19,000 grant from Medical Research Council/UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to support early career researchers across academic disciplines.

2014-2018: £85,000 PhD scholarship from Natural Environment Research Council (NERC, UK) and Imperial College London. Scholarship included tuition fees, annual stipend and research grant.


My Qualifications

Imperial College London, UK (2019): PhD in Geology and Geophysics

University of Oxford, UK (2014): Masters in Earth Sciences (Geology) including BA Hons.


My Awards

2019: Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface Most read and downloaded paper (Lodhia et al., 2019).

2018: American Association of Petroleum Geologists SEPM best student presentation at AAPG ACE event, Salt Lake City, Utah, US.

2017: Petroleum Exploration Society of Great Britain best presentation award at the 17th annual African exploration and production conference, London, UK.


My Research Activities

Research

2021 - 2023 (UNSW, Australia)

ARC Linkage project 'Kinematica'. My work focuses on coupling fluid flow and dynamic basin processes to produce a rapid resource exploration tool. Recent publication: Lodhia, B.H., Clark, S.R. Computation of vertical fluid mobility of CO2, methane, hydrogen and hydrocarbons through sandstones and carbonates. Sci Rep 12, 10216 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-14234-6.

2019 - Present (Imperial College London, UK)

UK Unconventional Hydrocarbons (UKUH) project. My work focused on estimating shale gas resources in Northern England's Bowland Basin. I am currently a collaborator on this and several other linked projects, including investigating why unconventional shale gas failed in the United Kingdom and possibilities for low-carbon natural gas extraction in shales.

Geological Society of London. I am an editor for an upcoming special volume on sedimentary and geochemical processes in black shales and basin evolution in Northern England, due to be published in late 2021/early 2022.

2014 - 2018 PhD research (Imperial College London, UK)

My PhD research focused on linking dynamic mantle processes, basin development, continental uplift/subsidence and sedimentary source to sink processes across the African continent and in the Mauritanian Basin, West Africa. My PhD thesis is available at https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/handle/10044/1/67891. Publications from my PhD are:

  • GG Roberts, N White, BH Lodhia (2019), The generation and scaling of longitudinal river profiles, Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface 124 (1), 137-153.
  • BH Lodhia, GG Roberts, AJ Fraser, J Jarvis, R Newton, RJ Cowan (2019), Observation and Simulation of Solid Sedimentary Flux: Examples From Northwest Africa, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 1-22.
  • BH Lodhia, GG Roberts, AJ Fraser, S Fishwick, S Goes, J Jarvis (2018), Continental margin subsidence from shallow mantle convection: Example from West Africa, Earth and Planetary Science Letters 481, 350-361.

My Research Supervision


Areas of supervision

  • Geology
  • Geophysics (geodynamics, tectonics, mantle processes)
  • Computational geoscience
  • Economic geology

Currently supervising

  • Harikrishnan Nalinakumar, UNSW (2021-2024), PhD thesis: Architecture and resources of the South Nicholson Basin, Australia
  • Mackenzie Baker, UNSW (2021-2023), MPhil thesis.

My Teaching

Lecturing

  • 2022: Lecturer for Seismic Imaging course (10-weeks, 5 modules) at School of Mineral and Energy Resources, UNSW
  • 2019-2020: Lecturer for seismic techniques course at Imperial College London (undergraduate and postgraduate)
  • 2019-2020: Lecturer for basin development course at Imperial College London (postgraduate)
  • 2019-2020: Tutor for postgraduate students

Previous research student supervision

  • Otto Whittaker Terrell, Imperial College London (2020). MSc thesis: Unconventional hydrocarbons in the Cleveland Basin, Northern England
  • Youjie Jiang, Imperial College London (2019). MSc thesis: North American Unconventional Basin Benchmark Study.
View less