Education

• 2002 Ph.D.  (Geophysics) Department of Applied Earth Sciences, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

• 1997 M.Sc.  (Laurea, Civil Hydraulic Engineering), University of Cagliari, Italy

• 1994 D.E.A. (Fluid Mechanics and Transport Phenomena), ENSAM of Talence, Bordeaux, France

Current LBNL position

2006 Geologic Scientist, Earth Sciences Division

Optimization approaches for the design of monitoring arrays to detect CO2 leakage and seepage signals from geologic CO2 storage sites.

Modeling of hydro-geomechanical processes related to induced fracturing and fluid-induced material transport.

Past Positions

2005 Postgraduate Researcher, Department of Land, Air, and Water, University of California, Davis, USA

2002 Visiting scientist (Marie Curie Fellow) at the Department of Environmental Sciences and Energy Resources, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

1997 External consultant for the Department of Territorial Engineering of the University of Cagliari (Italy)

Research Interests

• Transport, absorption and desorption, and deposition of tracers and colloids in porous media;

• Nano-materials for groundwater remediation;

• Visco-thermal frequency dependent dissipation in porous media (Biot theory);

• Multicomponent (uphill) diffusion;

• Density dependent flow-dissolution coupling in salt fractures;

• Spectral numerical methods for non-local in time and space transport equations;

• Phase separation and Landau-Ginzburg potentials;

• Upscaling theories for porous media;

• Lattice-Boltzmann Equations for fluid flow in porous and fractured materials

• Optimization techniques for CO2 leakage and seepage detection monitoring arrays

Patents

2005 "Zero Valent Metal Composite Catalyst, Manufacturing, System and Method using thereof, for Catalytically Treating Contaminated Water”

Selected Publications

1. Cortis, A. (2007) Péclet-dependent memory kernels for transport in heterogeneous mediaPhys. Rev. E 76, 030102(R)
2. Boano, F., Packman, A.I., Cortis, A. Revelli, R., and Ridolfi, L.. (2007) A continuous time random walk approach to the stream transport of solutes, Water Resour. Res., doi:10.1029/2007WR006062, in press.
3. Cortis, A. and Ghezzehei T.A. (2007) On the transport of emulsions in porous media, J. Colloid and Interface Science 313 (1): 1-4
4. Cortis, A. and Knudby C. (2006) A CTRW approach To Anomalous Transient Flow in Heterogeneous Porous Media, Water Resour. Res., 42 (10): Art. No. W10201
5. Cortis, A., Harter, T., Hou, L., Atwill, E. R., Packman, A., and Green, P. (2006). Long-time Elution of Cryptosporidium parvum Oocysts in Porous Media Water Resour. Res., 42 (12): Art. No. W12S13
6. Berkowitz, B., Cortis, A., Dentz, M., & Scher (2006), H. Modeling Non-Fickian Transport in Geological Formations Rev. Geophys., Reviews of Geophysics, 44 (2): Art. No. RG2003
7. Cortis A. and Berkowitz B. (2005) , Computing ‘‘Anomalous’’ Contaminant Transport in Porous Media: The CTRW MATLAB Toolbox GROUND WATER Vol. 43, No. 6—November–December 2005 (pages 947–950)
8. Amitay-Rosen, T., Cortis, A., and Berkowitz, B. (2005) Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Quantitative Analysis of Particle Deposition in Porous Media Environ. Sci. Technol., 39, 18, 7208, 7216, 2005, 10.1021/es048788z S0013-936X(04)08788-7
9. Cortis, A., Chen, Y., Scher, H., & Berkowitz, B. (2004) Quantitative characterization of porescale disorder on transport in “homogeneous” granular media. Physical Review E (Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics), 70(4):041108.
10. Cortis, A. and Berkowitz, B. (2004). Anomalous transport in “classical” soil and sand columns, Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J., 68: 1539-1548.
11. Emmanuel, S., Cortis, A., and Berkowitz, B. (2004). Diffusion in multicomponent systems: A free energy approach. Chem. Phys., 302:21–30, doi:10.1016/j.chemphys.2004.03.013.
12. Cortis, A., Gallo, C., Scher, H., and Berkowitz, B. (2004). Numerical simulation of non-Fickian transport in geological formations with multiple-scale heterogeneities. Water Resour. Res., (40), W04209, doi:10.1029/2003WR002750.
13. Dentz, M., Cortis, A., Scher, H., and Berkowitz, B. (2004). Time behavior of solute transport in heterogeneous media: transition from anomalous to normal transport. Adv. Water Resour., 27(2):155–173,
14. oi:10.1016/j.advwatres.2003.11.002.
    Cortis, A., Smeulders, D., Guermond, J.-L., & Lafarge, D. (2003). Influence of pore roughness on high-frequency permeability. Phys. Fluids, 15 (6):1766–1775.
15. Cortis, A. & Smeulders, D. (2001). On the viscous length scale of wedge–shaped porous media. Int. J. Eng. Sci., 39, 951–962.

Andrea Cortis
Scientist

Hydrogeology Department

Phone: 510-495-2507
Email: acortis@lbl.gov