About

Pietro de Anna is physicist, in 2009 he got a Master from the University of Florence (Italy) in Statistical Mechanics. In 2012 Pietro got a PhD in Geosciences from the University of Rennes 1 (Brittany, France), where he studied mixing and reactions in porous media flows. In the period 2012-2015 he was postdoctoral fellow at MIT (Boston, U.S.), where he learned and developed microfluidics and microscopy techniques for porous media flows investigation. Since August 2015 he is an assistant professor (tenure track) within the Applied and Environmental Geophysics Group at the Institute of Earth Sciences (ISTE) of the University of Lausanne (UNIL). Pietro's research focuses at the physics of small scale flow and mixing in near surface environments, with particular attention to their coupling with chemical and biological activities. He incorporate theoretical/numerical approaches to novel microfluidics experiments allowing the direct visualization and quantification of small scale processes in confined flows.

Impact of DiaMonD

Pietro was Postdoc with Ruben Juanes at MIT and partially supported by DiaMonD. In collaboration with Bryan Quaife and George Biros (from UT at Austin) and his supervisor Ruben Juanes (MIT), he investigated the relationship between pore structure and the resulting fluid flow and transport behavior in 2D geometries representing simplified porous material structures. He derived an analytical relationship between the pore throat size distribution and the distribution of the low fluid velocities, based on the conceptual model of porelets (Hagen--Poiseuille flows established within each pore throat). The proposed model allows to make predictions---within stochastic random walk (CTRW) framework---for the asymptotic statistics of spreading of fluid particles along their own trajectories. Additionally, the DiaMonD team and DiaMonD’s broad themes were a unique opportunity for Pietro to establish research collaborations, far beyond the lifetime of their DiaMonD support. Pietro is currently working on the 3 dimensional counterpart of its 2 dimensional models with Ruben Juanes.