Andrea Tomassi: A scholarship to revolutionize geodynamics

There were almost two thousand applicants across Europe, but only 185 winners were awarded a grant from the European Research Council (ERC). Reserved for established researchers, the €2.5 million Advanced Grant provides funding for an innovative and original research project over a period of five years."I've been preparing this project for two years, "explains Andrea Tommasi, research director in the " Mantle and Interfaces "team at the Montpellier Geosciences Laboratory. "Thanks to this grant, we will be able to focus on a fundamental research project, without immediate benefits, by funding research, post-doctoral fellows, doctoral contracts, etc." With 11 winners, the CNRS is the institution that has received the most awards from the ERC in Europe.

Better predicting Earth deformation

Andréa Tommasi's project, called RhEoVOLUTION, aims to provide the scientific community studying Earth deformation with a new tool for predicting where and how deformation occurs in the plates that form the outer shell of the solid Earth.

"It is very difficult today to simulate terrestrial deformation,"explains Andréa Tommasi. "This is because this deformation is very heterogeneous and results from the interaction between processes that occur on scales ranging from microns to several hundred kilometers. It's like trying to open a Russian doll without being able to reach the smallest one."

This difficulty is also due to the wide range of physical and chemical processes involved in rock deformation. It is also due to the fact that rocks are anisotropic, meaning that the way they deform depends on the orientation of the forces relative to their internal structure. " As with climate prediction, we propose using stochastic approaches and incorporating the variability of the mechanical behavior of rocks as parameters in our models. This variability can be determined by observing rocks, but also through experiments on analogous materials with in-situ observations. " continues the researcher.

The goal is to be able to explain the processes responsible for plate tectonics, particularly the formation of new plate boundaries, more than 50 years after this paradigm was established. "But we also hope to apply these models to current issues, such as the deformation of ice caps."

A career marked by success

In 1998, Andrea Tommasi, originally from Brazil, joined the CNRS. From the outset of her career, she has been interested in the processes responsible for terrestrial deformation at all scales. In 2016, she was elected a fellow ofthe American Geophysical Union, a distinction recognizing researchers who have made an exceptional contribution to earth sciences. In 2020, Andrea Tommasi also received the CNRS Silver Medal. "It's been a great start to the year for me, as I've received a medal for my previous research and a grant for future projects," says the researcher.