During the Syrian war, millions fled. The fields were abandoned. And from space, the ground started to rise — a silent signal that the aquifers were refilling. Saeed Mhanna detected it from Switzerland, using satellites.Saeed Mhanna | Hydrogeologist | PhD, University of Neuchâtel | Postdoctoral Researcher, EAWAG Dübendorf━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━In this fourth episode of WE ROCK GeoCareers, I sit down with Saeed Mhanna, Lebanese hydrogeologist and freshly minted PhD.He started in petroleum studies in Beirut — because Lebanon needed oil. He ended up drilling wells for Syrian refugees instead. Then he came to Switzerland to do a PhD on how war affects groundwater — using satellites and AI to read what's happening underground in conflict zones he couldn't physically visit. His paper went viral on Al Arabiya. He won Ma Thèse en 180 Secondes — in French, as a non-French speaker. And now he's a postdoc at EAWAG, studying how mining affects water resources worldwide.In this episode:— From petroleum dreams to drilling wells for Syrian refugees— How a satellite detects groundwater recovery in a war zone— The Kakhovka dam disaster in Ukraine — and the wetlands that came back— His paper going viral on Al Arabiya — and being misrepresented— "Touching grass" — what happens when a researcher leaves academia and goes on Facebook— Winning MT180 in French as a non-French speaker— Mining vs water: the dilemma of resources we can't live without— What kept him going during the hardest moments of his PhD— His final message: find hope even in the darkest places━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━SAEED MHANNALinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saeed-mhanna-154569a1/EAWAG: eawag.chCHYN UniNE: unine.ch/chynMT180 UNINE : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEOd6gZpXUcMT180 Suisse : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSkC-qlQzJA ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━WE ROCKYouTube: @werockgeomediaSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033pzISIs9qaFcxsXkQAu9Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-rock-geomedia/id1896890768YouTube Music: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAoKvUnH4Uqbt2-5ZuROWdYApP5V3PLGZAmazon Music: https://music.amazon.fr/podcasts/6331c5cb-3724-4252-bc61-52ce3154c065/we-rock-geomediaInstagram: @werockgeomediaLinkedIn: WE ROCK GeomediaTikTok: @werockgeomediaFacebook: WE ROCK GeomediaEmail: werock.geomedia@gmail.comWhere Earth Sciences Meet Society.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━CREDITSAuthor, producer, director, filming & publishing: Sam-Bien SogleProduction assistance: Victoria GarciaSOURCES IMAGESPhotos MT180 UniNe : Mario CafisoPhotos MT180 Suisse : Alain HerzogVideos & Photos Kakhovka : Reuters, BBC, ACTI-Framework : Saeed Mahnna━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━#GeoCareers #WEROCK #Hydrogeology #EarthSciences #Syria #WaterSciences #Podcast #Geosciences #RemoteSensing #WaterCrisis