My News
Here's some of the recent events on my journey as an professor.
October - November 2024 - After three incredible weeks on my International Association of Mathematical Geosciences Distinguished Lecture Tour, I’m filled with gratitude and inspiration. This journey took me to several outstanding schools and departments in subsurface engineering and geoscience, where I immersed myself in each community for a full day. While I presented my distinguished lectures, I also eagerly engaged with students and faculty in teaching sessions, discussions, and any other opportunities to connect and serve. My response to every invitation was an enthusiastic, “Yes!”
Each stop on the tour was a unique experience, thanks to the faculty, staff, and students who crafted action-packed agendas. I owe a huge thank you to the incredible hosts at each institution:
University of Houston - Professor Birol Dindoruk
Penn State - Professors Hamid Emami-Meybodi and Luis F. Ayala
Rice University - Anindita Dash and Yangtianli Zhou
Stanford Mineral-X - Dr. David Zhen Yin and Sofia Mantilla Salas
Montana Tech - Professors Todd Hoffman, David Reichhardt and Chris Roos, PE
University of Oklahoma - Professor Matthew Pranter
Virginia Tech - Professors Emily Sarver and Aaron Noble
Thank you all for your time, kindness, and hospitality—I learned so much from each of you. Here are just a few takeaways from my journey:
1. The dedication and passion among professors at these institutions are truly inspiring.
2. The next generation of engineers and geoscientists is not only talented but also will be ready to tackle the world's most challenging issues.
This experience has left me inspired, hopeful, and deeply appreciative of the remarkable people in our field.
July 2024 - I have published my first e-book. I have been carefully curating my many geostatistics well-documented demonstration workflows on GitHub and I wanted to do more to make them accessible to all. The e-book is the perfect opportunity, since it is a living document that I can continue to update and to include live links to all my recorded lectures and other workflows and interactive dashboards.
Appreciation to Prof. John Foster for the suggestion to work with the jupyter-book Python package and to post the e-book online on GitHub. Check it out at:
January 2024 - I cohosted the 4th Annual Energy AI Hackathon open to all students at The University of Texas at Austin with Professor John Foster. 3 days of very little sleep! Over 160 longhorns on 25 teams participated!
Appreciation to our department, Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems engineering, industry mentors, and judges for their strong support for Data Science education. Excellent work by our students! Outstanding work by our hackathon architects, Elnara Rustamzade and Fehmi Özbayrak.
February 2023 - I was notified by Chair Jon Olson and Dean Roger Bonnecaze of my promotion to Full Professor.
January 2023 - I cohosted the 3rd Annual Energy AI Hackathon open to all students at The University of Texas at Austin with Professor John Foster. 3 days of very little sleep! Appreciation to our department, Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems engineering, industry mentors, and judges for their strong support for Data Science education. Excellent work by our students! Outstanding work by our hackathon architects, Elnara Rustamzade and Ruoyu Wang.
March 2022 - I hosted the 2nd Annual Energy AI hackathon open to all students at The University of Texas at Austin. 3 days of very little sleep! Taught a workshop, mentoring teams and running the show with Prof. John Foster. Appreciation to our department, Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems engineering, industry mentors and judges for the strong support for Data Science education. Excellent work by our students! Outstanding work by our hackathon architects, Wen Pan and Elnara Rustamzade.
December 2021 - I was surprised at the Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering, Cockrell School of Engnineering, The University of Texas at Austin holiday party with our department's 'Outstanding Teaching Award', presented by our chair, Professor Jon Olson. The selection was based on student feedback. This means a lot to me. Appreciation to the students and awards committee.
October 2021 - Proud of my students for a strong showing at GeoGulf 2021 here in Austin. 5 presentations including Wen Pan, Midé Mabadeje, Jose Hernandez, Eduardo Maldonado-Cruz, and Honggeun Jo (virtual talk). Amazing, novel work in subsurface data analytics and machine learning.
September 2021 - I'm excited to add 4 new graduate students to my team (at 15 now). Welcome Elnara Rustamzade, Misael Morales, Lei Liu, and Blazej Ksiazek.
July 2021 - I received the SPE Gulf Coast Section Data Science and Engineering Analytics award. I appreciate the opportunity to serve and support our subsurface geoscience and engineering community. Thank you for the recognition.
November 2020 - We can't let COVID stop us! I announced that I would give my AAPG Distinguished Lecture remotely at any geoscience department and what a great response. In the month or so, I spoke at Virginia Tech, Fresno State, University of Georgia and University of Oklahoma. I had a blast visiting with all the amazing students and faculty to share my experience with subsurface data analytics and machine learning.
September 2020 - It was an honor to give my first TED talk at TEDx UT Austin. To support the BreakThrough theme of the event, I talked about my own First Generation experience, the impact of education in my life, my desire to give back by sharing all my educational 'products' beyond campus with social media. It is my hope that I can be a voice for accessible engineering and science, perhaps someone's life will be changed as mine was due to a student engineer that spoke up randomly at a gas station! For me it is all about breaking down barriers and making campus a welcoming place to all!
May 2020 - The American Association of Petroleum Geologists unlocked my distinguished lecture on Subsurface Data Analytics and Machine Learning. Anyone can watch it! Click the image above to check it out. Thank you to Vern Stefanic, Heather Hodges, and everyone else I got to work with at the AAPG education foundation. What an amazing group!
Jan 2020 - I was recently appointed to the Jackson School of Geosciences! I'm so excited to continue to build collaborative opportunities between the engineering and geosciences aspects of subsurface development and environmental protection and I'm excited to further support spatial data analytics, geostatistics, and machine learning education for geoscience students. I have always spanned engineering and geoscience and to me, this is a great professional honor and opportunity! Thank you for the great welcome, Jackson School!
Dec. 2019 - While I recorded my Distinguished Lecture with the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, I also got to join Vern Stefanic for his Digging Deeper podcast. Click the image above to check it out.