International Research Training group NUPUS Non-linearities and Upscaling in Porous Media Flow

NUPUS FINAL POPULAR SCIENCE REPORT This infrastructure project has financed student and faculty exchange centered around the Norwegian participation in the International Training Network "Nonlinearities and Upcaling in porous media" (NUPUS). The core activities have been: * Organizing the 2nd International NUPUS Conference. * Organizing student exchange tours to leading European and American research groups. * Funding long-term student exchange visits, both to and from Norwegian institutions. * Funding participation of Norwegian students to the annual NUPUS workshops in Germany. * Co-organizing and partial funding for the open-access special issue of Transport in Porous Media dedicated to the NUPUS collaboration. * Establishing long-term bi-lateral agreements on student mobility. * Facilitating an enhanced educational and academic experience for PhD students in both Norway and abroad, including those funded by NFR projects MatMoRA-II, GeoStim, Protect and VAMP.

The main idea of the International Research Training School NUPUS is to bring together researchers and students from various disciplines in a common effort to study nonlinearities and scale issues related to porous media flow. The research efforts are do ne in projects directly funded by NUPUS or funded sperately, like the projects MatMoRA, VAMP, IGEMS, and SUCCESS on the Norwegian side. The International Research Training School NUPUS aims to improve "the qualification of doctoral researchers within th e framework of a focused research program and a structured training strategy''. The Norwegian side of NUPUS, funded by this project, will facilitate exchanges, regular meetings, short courses, and conferences for students and researchers associated with N UPUS. As part of this the project group will organize the "2nd International Conference on Non-linearities and Upscaling in Porous Media''. The central research topics of the International Research Training School NUPUS are non-linearities and upscaling of flow and transport processes in porous media. Non-linearities are particularly important for multiphase flow systems because of the strongly non-linear constitutive relations for basic hydraulic properties that characterize the interaction between poro us media and fluids. Upscaling, on the other hand, is a problem inherent to any modeling approach for porous media. Non-linearities and the need for effective upscaling methods are particulary evident in modeling and simulation of CO2-storage in the und erground, which is a main application area of the research in the NUPUS-program. This application area will also be a main focus of "2nd International Conference on Non-linearities and Upscaling in Porous Media''.