Background

The Struct-Strat project will be run out of the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds, one of the largest geoscience groups in the UK. The school is home to a long-standing centre of excellence in structural geology that includes academic staff in the school and those with adjunct positions in the spin-off company, Rock Deformation Research. The school is also home to the Turbidites Research Group, a major industry-funded consortium directed at understanding deep-water clastics. The other key grouping is the school’s Geophysics Institute that provides substantial expertise in geodynamic modelling and seismology. There is a history of collaboration between all these groups. The school has a vibrant graduate population of >40 PhD students and a range of industry-facing taught masters programmes. These include the only Geophysics MSc in the UK together with a Structural Geology with Geophysics program that focuses on the analysis of industry-standard data, especially seismic. In addition there is a strong Engineering Geology group (with its own MSc program) that provides expertise in geotechnical issues. As well as strengthening the background research environment, all of these groupings provide opportunities for spin-off mini-projects working on specific data-sets that could feed into the overall research effort of the Struct-Strat project, or remain proprietary.

Our long term vision is to capitalise upon Leeds reputation as a centre of excellence in Earth Sciences research.  We aim to continue develop complementary, industry-facing programmes that build upon existing research strengths.  Thus, Struc-Strat is complementary to TRG in its themes, but is distinct from it.