2011 Distinguished Lecturer

Doug Oldenburg

University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Imaging the Earth's near surface: The why and how of applied geophysics for the 21st century

Biography

Doug Oldenburg received a B.Sc. (honors) degree in physics in 1967 and an M.Sc. in geophysics in 1969 from the University of Alberta in Edmonton. He completed a Ph.D. in 1974 at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD, in earth sciences. After a three-year postdoctoral fellowship in Alberta he joined the Geophysics and Astronomy Department at the University of British Columbia. He remains at UBC where he is currently Professor, Director of the Geophysical Inversion Facility (UBC-GIF) and holder of the Teck Senior Keevil Chair in Mineral Exploration. He is an Honorary Member of CSEG and SEG. Doug's research career has focused upon the development of inversion methodologies and their application to solving applied problems. He, with students and colleagues at UBC-GIF, has developed forward modeling and inversion algorithms for seismic, gravity, magnetic and electromagnetic (EM) data.  Doug's current research activities include 3D forward modeling and inversion of EM data, enhancing potential field and EM inversion by incorporating various types of geophysical and geological information, and development of software for unexploded ordnance discrimination.