SEP at the 80th Annual Meeting By Spring Harris The SEG/ExxonMobil Student Education Program (SEP) is being held in conjunction with SEG's 80th Annual Meeting in Denver, USA. The program is in the third year of a five-year grant, and for the past three years has offered geophysics students the chance to apply the science they are learning in the classroom. The topic of the program is Multi-disciplinary subsurface integration in exploration and production from "Plates to Pores . . .". Over a two and a half-day period 30 students from 17 different countries have the opportunity to experience some of the day-to-day tasks performed by geophysicists and geologists working in the oil industry. The course began with a welcome event that gave students a chance to get to know each other and meet the five instructors provided by ExxonMobil. According to Tommie Rape, one of the course instructors, the course gives students the opportunity to "use science and apply the scientific principles of geology and geophysics in the oil industry." As the course progresses, students are examining the geology of a basin in Australia and working in teams to perform exercises that mirror the day-to-day work of petroleum geophysicists. Students are drawn to the course for a variety of reasons. Hannah Hilbert-Wolf, a former International Science and Engineering Fair award winner, was drawn to the course by the chance to experience the practical applications of geophysics. While Paneet Saraswat, a graduate student from the Indian School of Mines, traveled from India to attend the program for the opportunity to experience "real-world scenarios" in the field of geophysics. The course is open to both graduate and highly qualified undergraduate students and is giving many of them their first opportunity to see how seismic theory is applied to integrated interpretation in the oil industry. The next SEP course will be offered 4–6 April 2011 in conjunction with the SPE/SEG Joint Applied Technology Workshop on "Giant Fields Monitoring and Development" in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Click here for event photos Related Annual Meeting News: | | | |
