English version: Diana Taborda
Inês Pereira, researcher at the Centre for Geosciences of the University of Coimbra (Faculty Department of Earth Sciences of the Faculty of Sciences and Technology - FCTUC) has been awarded a €2.5 million European Research Council (ERC) starting grant for the next five years to fund the project “FINGER-PT – Fingerprinting cold subduction and Plate Tectonics using key minerals”, set to kick off in January 2024 in order to develop and test new tools to track the evolution of plate tectonics over time and determine when the process began.
Inês Pereira says that “Although there have been major efforts to understand the evolution of plate tectonics, we still don't know exactly when this incredible phenomenon started. We only know that it did not exist when the Earth was formed around 4570 million years ago, and that it has been around for at least 1000 million years."
According to the UC geologist, this grant will allow the establishment of two new laboratories at the Faculty of Sciences and Technology (FCTUC). One of the labs will have a unique integrated system for Raman imaging and scanning electron microscopy, while the other will enable work on absolute geochronology, using a coupled system of a laser and a mass spectrometer. Both will help to address the current shortfall in providing Earth sciences researchers in Portugal with access to this type of equipment. Besides being crucial to the implementation of this project, Pereira hopes that, in the long term, these laboratories can become a national and international benchmark in Earth Sciences and an excellent opportunity to strengthen the training of our students in the fields of geochemistry and geochronology”.
The project will have the participation of professors Pedro Dinis (FCTUC) and Kenneth Koga (Université d'Orlèans), researcher Emilie Bruand (Geo-Ocean) and the research team of Matteo Alvaro (Università di Pavia).