Geophysics students won top honors for research and knowledge this spring.
Master’s student Martis James-Ravenell won the Geophysics Masters Division at the ConocoPhillips-sponsored Research Fair. He described his work as follows: “My project was on a quantitative study of distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) data. The data was collected from an unconventional well targeting the Niobrara B formation in the DJ basin of Northern Colorado. The study focused on observations made from the DAS data and how I can characterize my observations. The event was a Geology, Geological Engineering, and Geophysics student research fair sponsored by ConocoPhillips that allowed undergraduate, Masters, and PhD students to showcase their research to a mixed audience of students, professors, and industry professionals. I participated in the Geophysics Masters division and won a $200 prize.”
PhD student Derrick Chambers took second place and MS student Ali Alsaad took third place in the Earth Systems and Resources oral competition at the on-campus GRADS research competition. Chamber’s presentation was titled, “Rockbursts, Lasers, and Microphones.” His work focused on using DAS to monitor seismoacoustic signatures of rockburts on a mining face. Alsaad’s presentation was titled, “Fluid Saturation Estimation Using Full Waveform Inversion (FWI): A Controlled Laboratory Experiment.” He created an experimental and modeling workflow and collected time-lapse acoustic data in the lab. Then he imaged the data using FWI to compare the saturation in a dry and partially saturated core sample.
People from across the nation gathered for the Denver Geophysical Society’s (DGS) annual 3D-Seismic Symposium, with the Geophysics Challenge Bowl as one of the prime events. This exciting competition allowed contestants the opportunity to connect with fellow geophysicists and students, fostering a vibrant community through engaging challenges.
Among the contenders, four teams emerged from Mines and University of Colorado-Boulder, setting the stage for a spirited contest. The initial round served as a warm-up, engaging the audience and hinting at the challenging nature of the multiple-choice questions to come. Through three successive rounds, competition was fierce, with the scores remaining tight. However, as the contest progressed, Pablo Chang Huang and Ethan Deal, Mines Geophysics seniors, managed to pull ahead, ultimately taking the victory in the Challenge Bowl. They are now looking forward to representing Mines at the larger geophysics challenge bowl at the IMAGE conference jointly sponsored by the American Association of Petroleum Engineers and Society of Exploration Geophysicists’ this August in Houston, TX.