Mr Yuriy Veytskin, a PhD candidate at North Carolina State University, is this year’s Fulbright CSIRO Postgraduate Scholar. Through his Fulbright, Yuriy will spend 12 months with CSIRO in Melbourne and Perth, further developing his work in nanomechanics and materials science.
“As part of Australia’s international commitment to climate change and carbon emissions reductions, the nation is seeking pioneering technologies to reinforce its upcoming position in the international carbon market,” Yuriy said.
“Nanotechnology addresses sustainable development issues by creating new materials, identifying new uses for existing materials, regulating material behaviour, and improving processing and production technologies for engineered systems to benefit the environmental, energy, and manufacturing sectors for Australia’s highly urbanized environments.”
Working with CSIRO’s Energy flagship, engaged by CSIRO Earth Science and Resource Engineering, and spending some time at the University of Melbourne, Yuriy is conducting atomic force microscopy (AFM) on shale, a sedimentary rock. AFM is a surface science technique for extracting and manipulating chemical and mechanical properties at small length scales. Yuriy is specifically investigating the effects of proppants, a commercial additive to fracking fluid, in maintaining shale rock fractures for hydraulic fracturing, along with the effects of these proppants on the surface chemistry of shale. Shales are important to Australia’s petroleum, geothermal, and sustainable energy markets, and AFM can motivate and inform industrial sectors on the benefits of nanoscale systems, technologies, and applications.
Both shales and polymers are important to Australia’s petroleum, geothermal, sustainable energy, and future manufacturing markets and can motivate and inform industrial sectors on the benefits of nanoscale systems, technologies, and applications.
“This is a real opportunity to use a high-precision method to explore an unconventional resource in a completely new way, whilst using minimal raw resources.
“The crux of my research is using microscale technologies to improve our understanding of hydraulic productivity in shale gas reservoirs, which contributes to one of the Energy flagship’s core goals of developing more sustainable energy sources,” said Yuriy.
Yuriy has a B.S.E. in Civil & Environmental Engineering from Duke University and a Master of Civil Engineering degree in Structures and Mechanics from North Carolina State University. He has past awards and honors including the University Graduate Fellowship from North Carolina State University, a Duke endowed scholarship, and a Valedictorian Scholars award. His interests and hobbies include tennis, soccer, badminton, art, and travelling, and he is eagerly awaiting the 2014 Australian Open.
