Weglein Honored for Groundbreaking Approach to Seismology

Once Controversial, Weglein’s Work Is Becoming Mainstream

Editor’s Note: Read UH’s news release for more information on Dr. Weglein’s honor.

The Society of Exploration Geophysicists is recognizing UH physicist Arthur Weglein for pioneering work in extracting useful information from seismic data.

Weglein, the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished University Chair in Physics and a professor of physics and earth and atmospheric sciences, will receive the society’s highest honor, the 2016 Maurice Ewing Gold Medal. His selection is in recognition of his work on the inverse scattering series and his writing and teaching.

The idea for removing multiple reflections without subsurface information wasn’t accepted when Weglein first suggested it in the 1980s. “It was originally considered controversial,” he said. “It was unorthodox. Now it’s become fully mainstream.”

He joined the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in 2000 following a career in industry and heads the Mission-Oriented Seismic Research Program. The lab, a petroleum industry consortium and research program, works to identify and solve the highest priority seismic exploration and production challenges, whose solutions will have the biggest positive impact on the ability to successfully drill exploration and production wells.

Weglein said the one-in-10 success rate of drilling frontier exploration wells in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico is evidence that fundamental new, more capable and effective concepts and methods of processing seismic data were needed. “Every seismic method is based on and makes assumptions,” he said. “When these assumptions are satisfied, the methods work and are effective. If they aren’t satisfied, they don’t.”

His research group identifies assumptions and requirements behind current seismic methods that can contribute to drilling a dry hole. They then develop methods that either help to better satisfy and provide those requirements and prerequisites or develop entirely new concepts and methods that do make those assumptions and do not have those requirements.

Working with the inverse scattering series, he developed a way to process seismic data that did not require any knowledge about the subsurface to achieve any seismic objective, including not needing information above the reservoir to locate and to delineate a reservoir.

Weglein received the Townsend Harris Medal from City College of New York in 2008 and the SEG’s Reginald Fessenden award in 2010 for this work.

Jeannie Kever, University Media Relations