The first internship regarding TWINN2SET was conducted by the PhD Student and Scientific Associate of IG/FORTH Efsevia Fragkou (Chemical Engineer) visited the UiS in May 2023 (Figure 1) supervised by Professor Raoof Gholami and her internship focused on Dumux^x training, an open-source simulator for flow and transport processes in porous media. Dumu^x has also integrated biochemical reactions in the code, pertaining to methanogens and sulphate reducing bacteria (SRBs). For the first week of the visit, the goal was to familiarize with the Dumu^x code and interface and the second week of the visit was dedicated in working with real data from town gas storage in the Lobodice aquifer in Czech Republic. The internship focused on the underground gas storage, taking into account biochemical processes that may occur, with focus on methanogenic microorganisms. 

In addition, the PhD Student and Research Associate Georgia Charalampous (Biologist) visited Paris and IFPEN Energies Nouvelles in July 2023 under supervision of Dr. Simon Poirier (Research Engineer at the Environmental Microbiology laboratory). Her internship focused on the characterization of hydrogenotrophic microbes using cultivation methods and molecular biology techniques (e.g quantitative PCR). These categories of subsurface microorganisms affect the capacity of hydrogen storage systems in terms of quantity and composition of the gas injected during seasonal injection/withdraws cycles. The development of synthetic hydrogenotrophic microbial consortia will provide numerical simulations to study and model their activity.

Finally, a 6-month (February-July 2024) master internship at the premises of IFPEN in environmental microbiology was offered, entitled: ‘’Towards a better understanding of subsurface microbial hydrogenotrophic activities using synthetic consortia’’.  Details regarding the internship announcement on the following link: https://ig.forth.gr/job/271. The IFPEN supervisor is Dr. Simon Poirier-Biotechnology department and the IG/FORTH supervisors are Dr. Evina Gontikaki-Researcher IG/FORTH and Dr. Emmanuel Stamatakis-Researcher IG/FORTH.