Prix Ami Boué 2026 PhD Thesis Award for Giulia Mingardi

We are delighted to share fantastic news with our research group: the Société Géologique de France (SGF) has officially awarded Giulia Mingardi the prestigious Prix Ami Boué 2026. This major award recognizes her remarkable PhD research on mineral physics, which sheds new light on how phase transformations influence the elastic and rheological behavior of quartz-bearing rocks under lithospheric conditions. Giulia completed her PhD under a joint-supervision agreement (cotutelle) between the University of Pavia and the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) de Paris, supervised by Alexandre Schubnel, Julien Gasc, and Matteo Alvaro. The committee particularly highlighted the combination of her experimental and methodological approaches, which often presented significant technical challenges, along with the fundamental implications of her findings for seismic properties and the rheology of collision-subduction zones. Following her PhD, Giulia joined our department in Heidelberg, where she is currently an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow.

As part of the award, Giulia is invited to present her work in a short article for a special issue of the SGF journal « Terre et Science ».