Thomas Gernon (born 1983,

County Louth County Louth ( ; ga, An Lú) is a coastal county in the Eastern and Midland Region of Ireland, within the province of Leinster. Louth is bordered by the counties of Meath to the south, Monaghan to the west, Armagh to the north and Down to the ...

, Ireland) is an academic who won the Millennium

Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition (Ireland) The BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition, commonly called the Young Scientist Exhibition, is an Irish annual school students' science competition that has been held in the Royal Dublin Society, Dublin, Ireland, every January since the co ...

for his work on the numerical modeling of urbanization trends in Europe. His project ''The Geography and Mathematics of Europe’s Urban Centres'' was also awarded the prestigious Alumni Prize at the 12th

European Union Contest for Young Scientists The European Union (EU) Contest for Young Scientists is a science fair, initiated by the European Commission. It is a part of the European Union Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development, and is managed by the Directorate Gen ...

. In March 2000, Gernon was honoured with "the highest form of recognition a county can bestow" - a joint civic reception from

Louth Louth may refer to: Australia *Hundred of Louth, a cadastral unit in South Australia * Louth, New South Wales, a town *Louth Bay, a bay in South Australia **Louth Bay, South Australia, a town and locality Canada * Louth, Ontario Ireland * County ...

County Council and Dundalk Urban District Council. Thomas Gernon studied geology at University College Dublin graduating with First Class Honours in 2004. From September 2004 to September 2007, Gernon conducted a

De Beers De Beers Group is an international corporation that specializes in diamond mining, diamond exploitation, diamond retail, diamond trading and industrial diamond manufacturing sectors. The company is active in open-pit, large-scale alluvial and c ...

-funded Ph.D. on the volcanic eruption mechanisms of diamond-bearing rocks at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol. The dissertation, ''The dynamics of degassing and explosive volcanism in kimberlite pipes'', involved experimental work on the gas- fluidization of particles and fieldwork at Jwaneng Diamond Mine in the Kalahari Desert, Botswana, and the

Venetia Mine on the South Africa - Zimbabwe border. His work on the internal structure of volcanoes also takes him to many active volcanoes around the world, including those of Iceland, Italy, Greece, and the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East. Gernon is currently lecturer in geology at the University of Southampton.

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