Leonardo Muniz Pichel

Leonardo Muniz Pichel is a geologist at the Department of Earth Science, University of Bergen (UiB). He is an early-career researcher with a strong track record and several high-impact publications. After completing a bachelor’s degree in geology at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, he was admitted directly into a PhD program at the University of Manchester due to his outstanding academic performance. Pichel was a researcher at Imperial College London before starting his postdoctoral position at the University of Bergen in 2020. Recently, he was awarded the prestigious 2024 Lyell Award by the Geological Society of London.

The project Salt Solutions, led by Pichel, aims to understand how salt basins are formed and how they behave. This includes studying how different types of rocks and sediments within salt basins influence the movement of salt and the structure of salt formations. Salt Solutions is a new, ambitious, and interdisciplinary project. It will be the first to combine geophysical and geological data with highly detailed 2D and 3D data models to study salt movement across a range of scales—from small to large.

Pichel will use the funding to launch a research group at the Department of Earth Science at UiB. The funding will allow him to recruit two young and talented PhD candidates to work on the project, as well as a research assistant. As part of the project, Pichel will collaborate with experienced researchers from the University of Bergen, University of Oslo, University of Manchester, and Imperial College London. The project will also involve partners from the Bureau of Economic Geology and the University of Barcelona.