Today’s guest post comes from Daniel Minisini, a geologist with a passion for filming and philosophy who created a resource for the geosciences community called minigeology.com. In this post, he tells us a bit more about the website, and the inspiration behind the interviews he conducts and posts online.
Hi! I am Daniel, a sedimentologist and stratigrapher trained as a marine geologist by my maestro Fabio Trincardi in Bologna (Italy). I have studied and worked on modern submarine sediments, ancient turbidites, and black shales, by means of outcrops, cores, seismic data and well logs, around the Mediterranean and North America. Now I work at the Shell Research Laboratories and I live in Houston, capital of geologists. My free time is dedicated to a personal project called minigeology.com, a website where I video-interview protagonists and other characters within the Earth sciences.
It came naturally to me to start video recording the several smart geoscientific minds surrounding me and sharing their thoughts with all of you. Therefore, a couple of years ago, I decided to create a platform to do precisely that. The interviews spark from a variety of thoughts and questions I ask myself, about geology, its origins, its progress, and its relationship with other disciplines.
I still have much to understand about my own research. There are many topics in my research area that I take for granted because I read about them in books and scientific articles, but how did they originate and develop? How does my specific research topic fit in the wider context? And what should I answer when asked: “What is that useful for?”
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Through minigeology.com, I try to find answers to these and other questions by indirectly investigating how geoscientists approach a problem, their work, and their life. The interviews are informal and the format yields a short spontaneous discussion. By asking the ‘right’ questions, the interviews aim to stimulate the viewer to ask his or her own questions in their own research.
All geoscientists are part of minigeology.com, which works as a square to meet personalities in the Earth sciences on one hand, and as a round table for everyone to take part in the discussion on the other. Have an idea for an interview? Then email me by clicking the name below or upload your own video to the website.
Make sure to check a recent interview Daniel conducted with the 2012 Jean Baptiste Lamarck EGU medalist, Emiliano Mutti!
