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Fig 1: Fullbore Formation MicroImager (FMI) image of heterogeneous limestone |
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Fig 2: Porosity and lithology logs with uncertainty envelope
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Fig 3: Automatically designed wells
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No sooner had I finished my classes at UCLA, than I found myself in the Ph.D. program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, studying orogenesis (mountain building). My thesis work led to three long glorious summers in arctic Norway and Sweden where I studied the Cambro-Ordovician collision between ancient North America and Europe.
While at MIT I also studied thrust faults in Nevada and Switzerland, normal faults in California, and metamorphic rocks in New Hampshire. It was also at MIT that I learned how to program on an old Digital Equipment Corporation model PDP 11 computer. Here, I began having the first glimmers of how computers would one day transform the science of Geology
I finished writing my thesis on July 7th, 1986. The day after I was on a plane to the heart of Africa where I spent the next three months studying the structural geology and volcanology of the western branch of the East African Rift.
Upon returning from Africa (and defending my thesis), I spent the next year doing a post-doc at Harvard University. In addition to studying the extensional tectonics of the North Atlantic, I became more involved with the modeling of compressional and extensional regions using a desktop computer.
To fulfill my growing dream of "doing Geology on a Computer", I realized that the best opportunities existed in the oil industry. I therefore accepted a position with Shell Oil at their research lab in Houston. I spent 1988 and 1989 there, where I learned much about the oil industry from scratch. My interest in using computers to solve geological problems resulted in a transfer to the special projects division of Shell Offshore in New Orleans.
It wasn't long before I realized that I'd have to learn formal software engineering to make serious progress in fulfilling the "Geology on a Computer" dream. At that time (1990) I was presented with an opportunity to join the Schlumberger software engineering group in Austin, which was embarking on the brand-new GeoFrame* system. So, I packed my bags, threw out my Fortran manuals, bought a bunch of C manuals, took a deep breath, and said "Schlumberger, I can do this".
I've now been with Schlumberger since 1990, having spent three years in Austin and three back in Houston, learning this thing called "Software Engineering".
In early 1997, I again swapped hats, taking off the engineering hat, and putting the scientist’s hat back on: I packed my wife and son in our car and drove to Ridgefield, Connecticut to begin our tenure at Schlumberger-Doll Research. In 2004 I found myself returning to Boston as Schlumberger-Doll Research relocates to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The incredible advances we’ve witnessed in hardware and software during the past 20 years have led to exciting opportunities to automate much of the geological interpretation and modeling workflow in the search for oil and gas. I continue to be deeply involved in this process of understanding rock properties and fluid flow from the microscopic to the reservoir scale. I am currently developing techniques to characterize the heterogeneity of carbonate rocks (Fig. 1), understand the uncertainty in logging measurements (Fig. 2), and automatically design boreholes in a complex subsurface (Fig. 3).
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