The Franco-German University (DFH) honours the work of young academics with Franco-German or trinational study or doctoral careers with dissertation awards. In a festive setting, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Elysée Treaty, researchers received this recognition for their outstanding doctoral theses on 26 January 2023 at the French Embassy in Berlin. The DFH's dissertation awards are presented annually in various categories. The "Prix international" 2023, endowed with 2,000 euros, went to Dr. Dominik Mock: he received this award for his dissertation on magmatic processes of different scales in the lower oceanic crust of the Samail Ophiolite (Sultanate of Oman), which was written as part of a cotutelle de thèse between Leibniz Universität Hannover and the Université de Montpellier and published in 2021. The "Prix international" is sponsored by the Association Réalités et Relations Internationales (ARRI).
Dr Dominik Mock is the coordinator of the FZ:GEO research centre and a research assistant at the Institute of Mineralogy, where he also completed his doctoral thesis. The DFH also supported stays of several months at the French partner university during his doctorate. With the Dissertation Award, Dominik Mock is now being honoured by the DFH for the high quality of his scientific research as well as for his exceptional work in addition to his doctoral thesis.
Fundamental understanding of the formation of oceanic crust - applied aspects of storing CO2 in deep rock formations
Dominik Mock's dissertation entitled "Magmatic Processes at Various Scales in the Lower Oceanic Crust of the Samail Ophiolite (Sultanate of Oman)" deals with the study of oceanic crust. Oceanic crust is usually only found at great depths below sea level. Due to special tectonic movements, a fragment of oceanic crust (a so-called ophiolite) was pushed onto the Arabian continental plate more than 90 million years ago. This offers the opportunity to take samples of a geological milieu that is usually hidden under hundreds of metres of seawater. The German Research Foundation (DFG) priority programme IODP/ICDP, in which Mr Mock's doctoral project was located, took advantage of this together with international research partners from the Oman Drilling Project by drilling the rock sequence of the oceanic crust of Oman. Dominik Mock used the drill cores to collect chemical and structural data of the rocks in unprecedented resolution and to reconstruct the history of the formation of the crustal fragment.
In addition to fundamental scientific questions about the formation of the oceanic crust at mid-ocean ridges, Dominik Mock's research results also offer applied points of contact - because rocks of the oceanic crust have already been the focus of research for several years when it comes to storage through mineralisation of CO2 in the subsurface.
