Assessment of geophysical inversion methods for geothermal energy exploration

LookUp Geoscience aims to develop an innovative software to support exploration, create comprehensive geological models, and support the development of low-carbon energy such as geothermal and natural hydrogen. This tool, made up of several modules, will include one module dedicated to supporting and optimizing the exploration workflow. The development of this module raises research questions, particularly regarding the methodology guiding the choice of the most relevant geophysical surveys, survey design and inversion methods according to the geological context and the exploitation target, as well as the best way to acquire, integrate data and joint inversions and interpretations.

INTERNSHIP OBJECTIVES

The internship is part of a thesis project dealing with the development of an approach to optimize geophysical investigations of the subsurface for deep geothermal energy. The objective of the internship is to perform preliminary studies of geophysical data, acquisition strategies and algorithms for relevant inversions. You will work hand in hand with another intern, in charge of optimising geophysical survey designs by forward modelling.

WORK DESCRIPTION

The objective of this internship is to obtain constrained and resolved geophysical models by optimizing the processing, i.e. by identifying relevant processing algorithms available in the public domain for different geophysical methods. The datasets will include real geophysical data, but also synthetic dataset, generated by forward modelling (in the framework of a companion internship). The expected deliverable should include algorithms enable relevant inversions allowing to constrain geophysical models, simple to implement and reasonable in terms of computation time. A first assessment of uncertainties on the estimated physical parameters as well as on the spatial resolution of the model will be included.

DETAILS

The internship will take place at LookUp's site in Montpellier, for a period of 6 months starting in February 2025. This internship is paid. It may lead to a CIFRE thesis in collaboration with the University of Montpellier.

SKILLS
➢ Fourth-year university level (Master of Science)
➢ Programming (Python/C/C++, Github)
➢ Knowledgeable in Geophysics and signal processing,
➢ Curiosity for geology for geothermal energy
➢ Autonomy, initiatives, open-mindedness, collaboration
➢ English and/or French