Institute’s labs toured by Desk Officer of the Office of the President of Russia for Scientific and Educational Policy Yevgeny Beloklokov and Deputy Minister of Education and Science of Tatarstan Ramis Muzipov

They were accompanied by the Vice-Rector for Earth Sciences Danis Nurgaliev.

The guests familiarized themselves with the laboratories of paleomagnetism and magnetism of rocks; geochemistry, isotope and element analysis; X-ray computed tomography; petrophysical methods of geomaterials research, and others. In addition, they visited the 3D GEOCenter and the Geothermochronology Center.

“Geothermochronology is an actively developing field that allows us to read the temperature and temporal history of rocks,” explained Researcher Anna Kulikova to the visitors. “The Center has a unique instrumentation base, which allows conducting geochemical, isotopic and geothermochronological studies of a wide range of minerals and rocks.”

Employees of the Center develop and apply methods to improve the efficiency of searching for oil, gas and ore deposits, to assess the prospects of deposits, as well as to solve fundamental problems of geodynamics and evolution of the Earth’s crust.

Anna Kulikova told the guests about the methods of U-Pb and track dating of apatites and zircons.

“These methods allow not only to determine the age of minerals, but also to reconstruct the thermal history of rocks in time,” she noted in particular.

Kamil Minnebaev, Research Engineer of the Research Center GeoLab, informed about the main directions of scientific research of the Laboratory of Isotope and Elemental Analysis, which is a part of GeoLab.

“We carry out geochemical and isotopic studies by means of X-ray fluorescence analysis, inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry and analysis of isotopic ratio of light and heavy elements by means of mass spectrometry,” he commented.

Today the laboratory conducts research for all major Russian companies, such as Gazprom”, Rosneft, and Gazprom Neft.