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Zoe Shipton

Early Life
Shipton’s affinity for geology began when she was a young child. Her parents gifted her an educational book on volcanoes in response to Shipton having dreams about the hill behind their home turning into one. At the age of 8 she went to the site of Stromboli, an active volcano in Italy, with her grandfather — a time which Shipton claims was greatly influential in solidifying her interest in geology. She initially entered the field due to her interest in earth’s geological history, quickly realizing the link between geology and agriculture.

Education and Career
For her PhD, Shipton performed an Oil Industry-funded study on geological faults and the way that fluid flows through them to better understand how oil travels through the earth. Her specialization lies in the research of faults; she has travelled to places such as Japan and Taiwan in order to conduct studies on earthquakes by drilling into the resulting ruptures. Shipton has spoken on the topic of earthquakes caused by fracking, both in the UK and the US, in an effort to better the public’s understanding of the process. In a report by the Royal Academy of Engineering Shipton stated that, through careful procedures, fracking could be performed safely with little environmental detriment. Recently Shipton has written of finding a more sustainable energy source for heating homes in the UK.

Publications
Shipton has been published in several prominent geoscience journals, including Nature Energy, Tectonophysics, and The Journal of Structural Geology. While these works explore such topics as the connection between geologic faults and earthquake prediction, or the nature and control of fractures in different rock types, she has also written about teaching methods for communicating the value of uncertainty and flexibility in the development of geoscience knowledge. Shipton also discusses subjective bias in geological data gathered about fault lines. In “How do we see fractures?”, Shipton sets out a system of protocols to ensure the accurate collection of this data as it is often used in geological and predictive models. In “Interseasonal Compressed-air Storage Using Saline Aquifers” Shipton proposes the use of porous rock basins to hold large amounts of compressed gasses to store energy in a renewable energy system.