Louise Vick completed a PhD in rockfall modelling at the University of Canterbury in 2015, then worked in Auckland for Ormiston Associates. In 2017 she began a three-year postdoctoral fellowship in Tromsø (at UiT The Arctic University of Norway). Tromsø is in Northern Norway, high above the Arctic Circle and experiences long dark winters and summers where the sun never sets. Norway has a lot of unstable mountains that pose a risk to communities from rock avalanche and displacement waves in lakes and fjords. The postdoctoral fellowship is in rock slope failure, and Louise is focusing on using engineering geology to understand large rock slope deformations using drones, satellite InSAR, traditional mapping and rockslide instrumentation data to examine failure mechanisms. It means a lot of interesting fieldwork in the high mountains around Tromsø!
Louise also runs a Masters course titled Rock slope failures: Geology, hazard and monitoring where she teaches students mapping and analysis techniques for large unstable rock slopes.
Louise is a member of the IAEG Executive Committee and the Chair of the YEG (Young Engineering Geologists) Committee of the IAEG. See page 124 for more details about Louise’s international role and activities.
Above left: Mapping a rockslide on a coastal island from a drone
Above right: Skiing to a rockslide for mapping in winter (Photo S. Kjellman)
Above left: Skiing to collect data in winter (Photo: S. Kjellman)
Above right: Coring (frozen) lake sediments to age date a rock avalanche deposit (Louise in the red pants behind) (Photo: S. Kjellman)
