Our Ph.D. student Mattia Mazzucchelli has been awarded the “Ph.D. Student Award 2016” by the International Mineralogical Association (IMA).

Since 2016, IMA inaugurated its Ph.D. Student Award, aimed at supporting outstanding students in mineralogy and related disciplines by providing them with the opportunity to present their research at an international level (see Elements, vol. 12, p. 133). In 2016, three students have been selected by the IMA Council on the basis of their merits and achievements, and sponsored to present their research at the European Mineralogical Conference (EMC 2016) held in Rimini, Italy. Along with Mattia Mazzucchelli the recipients are Petra Jakubová from Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic) and Liene Spruzeniece from Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia).

Mattia presented in Rimini an oral contribution where he showed how numerical modeling (Finite Element Modeling) can be applied to understand the complex elasticity of mineral inclusions entrapped in Ultra High Pressure (UHP) metamorphic rocks, expanding the current limits of elastic geobarometry.