Seismic Soundoff

"In your academic work, you just have to do your work and you get your grade for your work. Now we're leading a team where when any other member of the team fails, the whole team has failed."

SEG EVOLVE asks students to take on challenges that go well beyond graduate coursework. Tobechukwu “Toby” Ude-Akpeh, Chukwudi Onyeakusi, and Papa Kwesi Eshun share how their 10-person international team tackled the Sleipner carbon storage project while navigating missing data, unfamiliar software, demanding deadlines, and four time zones.

They explain how industry mentors and faculty advisors helped them overcome technical obstacles, connect their work to economic decisions, and prepare to defend their recommendations at IMAGE.

Building on their The Leading Edge article, "Across continents and time zones: How Team Hyperville made global collaboration work," the students reveal why EVOLVE demands so much, what makes its mentorship valuable, and how professionals and universities help make the experience possible.

Read the TLE article at https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/seg/tle/article/45/7/548/732557/Student-Zone-Across-continents-and-time-zones-How.

Learn more about SEG EVOLVE, including its Energy Exploration and Carbon Solutions tracks and opportunities to participate as a student or mentor at https://seg.org/programs/student-programs/seg-evolve/.

QUESTIONS THIS CONVERSATION ANSWERS
> What makes SEG EVOLVE more demanding and rewarding than traditional graduate coursework?
> How do industry mentors and faculty advisors help students solve difficult technical problems and develop professional judgment?
> What do students gain from leading international teams and presenting their work to industry professionals at IMAGE?

ABOUT SEISMIC SOUNDOFF
Seismic Soundoff showcases conversations addressing the challenges of energy, water, and climate. Produced by the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) and hosted by Andrew Geary of 51 features, these episodes celebrate and inspire the geophysicists of today and tomorrow. Three new episodes monthly. See the full archive at https://seg.org/resources/podcast/.

“If you keep training on what people have already discovered and what’s already been identified, then you’re gonna be limited in what you can actually come up with.”

AI is very good at finding patterns in seismic data. The harder question is whether those patterns make geological sense.

Nancy House remembers looking at a Gulf of Mexico seismic line after years of working in an overthrust regime and initially seeing a thrust fault. It wasn’t. Her regional experience had shaped what she saw. That is exactly the kind of mistake AI can make if pattern recognition gets separated from geological context.

Nancy connects that problem to two years of work with the GeoGPT governance committee, where the questions are just as unsettled: what knowledge trains these systems, how proprietary data is protected, and who should set the boundaries as the technology keeps changing.

QUESTIONS THIS CONVERSATION ANSWERS
> How can interpreters tell when AI has recognized geology and when it has only recognized a familiar pattern?
> Could training AI on existing interpretations limit the ability to identify genuinely new geologic possibilities?
> What role should professional societies play in governing geoscience AI?

ABOUT SEISMIC SOUNDOFF
Seismic Soundoff showcases conversations addressing the challenges of energy, water, and climate. Produced by the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) and hosted by Andrew Geary of 51 features, these episodes celebrate and inspire the geophysicists of today and tomorrow. Three new episodes monthly. See the full archive at https://seg.org/resources/podcast/.

“The goal is not cheaper data. The goal is to spend less on everything that does not add value to the decision one is trying to make.”

Low-cost monitoring is becoming less about cheaper sensors and more about designing geophysics around the decision that needs to be made.

Guest editors Erkan Ay and Joël Le Calvez use the The Leading Edge special section, "Low-cost monitoring for oil and gas production and emerging energies" to show what that looks like in practice, from DAS that makes fracture monitoring viable without a dedicated monitoring well to targeted measurements that act as an early-warning system.

Their argument is especially relevant in a tight-budget environment. Monitoring can become more routine and accessible, but only if geophysicists measure the right physics, automate intelligently, and remember that data itself is not the product. Decisions are.

Read June's The Leading Edge special section at https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/tle/issue/45/6.

QUESTIONS THIS CONVERSATION ANSWERS
> How can monitoring shift from repeated full-field imaging to targeted, decision-driven measurements?
> When can DAS and simpler monitoring systems make projects observable that otherwise would go unmonitored?
> Why should monitoring cost be judged by the actionable information it produces rather than acquisition cost alone?

ABOUT SEISMIC SOUNDOFF
Seismic Soundoff showcases conversations addressing the challenges of energy, water, and climate. Produced by the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) and hosted by Andrew Geary of 51 features, these episodes celebrate and inspire the geophysicists of today and tomorrow. Three new episodes monthly. See the full archive at https://seg.org/resources/podcast/.

“Machine learning over the last few years has become revolutionary. But we still need, and maybe even more so, the constraint and knowledge of rock physics and QI as an integral part of those workflows.”

Stephan Gelinsky describes quantitative interpretation as the place “where science meets business impact.” That idea anchors this conversation with Stephan and Per Avseth, built around the May quantitative interpretation special section of The Leading Edge.

Elastic FWI and machine learning are moving quickly into QI, but both guests argue that better algorithms make rock physics, geology, and judgment more important, not less.

Per also points to a broader challenge. Some students are turning away from reservoir geophysics because they associate it with petroleum, even though the same science is needed for CCS, geothermal, critical minerals, natural hydrogen, and other subsurface problems tied to the energy transition.

The question is not whether QI still matters. It is how the field keeps its physics, communicates uncertainty, and shows the next generation where that science can take them.

Read May's The Leading Edge special section at https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/tle/issue/45/5.

QUESTIONS THIS CONVERSATION ANSWERS
> How are elastic FWI and machine learning changing the role of QI specialists?
> What makes a QI result trustworthy enough to support a real decision?
> Why does QI remain foundational to CCS, geothermal, critical minerals, and other energy-transition problems?

ABOUT SEISMIC SOUNDOFF
Seismic Soundoff showcases conversations addressing the challenges of energy, water, and climate. Produced by the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) and hosted by Andrew Geary of 51 features, these episodes celebrate and inspire the geophysicists of today and tomorrow. Three new episodes monthly. See the full archive at https://seg.org/resources/podcast/.

“We really need to be able to explain in clear language and with vivid examples just what geophysics can do here.”

Michael B. Helgerud and Manika Prasad approach CCUS monitoring from two useful angles: Mike as an operator and Manika as an academic. Using their The Leading Edge special section on geophysics for CCUS as a starting point, they examine what monitoring must prove to operators, regulators, and communities as projects scale.

Mike emphasizes containment, pressure, storage capacity, and fit-for-risk surveillance. Manika points to major gaps in shared calibration data, basin-wide stress models, and especially the willingness to share mistakes and lessons learned.

Together, they argue that better technology alone will not settle the challenge. Geophysicists must combine different measurements more effectively, plan for decades of stewardship, and understand that communities may experience storage risk very differently from the scientists and operators evaluating it.

Read April's The Leading Edge special section at https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/tle/issue/45/4.

QUESTIONS THIS CONVERSATION ANSWERS
> What must geophysics demonstrate for operators, regulators, and communities to trust CO2 storage?
> Why is sharing calibration data, mistakes, and lessons learned essential to scaling CCUS monitoring?
> How should monitoring change when CO2 storage must remain secure for decades rather than a single project phase?

ABOUT SEISMIC SOUNDOFF
Seismic Soundoff showcases conversations addressing the challenges of energy, water, and climate. Produced by the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) and hosted by Andrew Geary of 51 features, these episodes celebrate and inspire the geophysicists of today and tomorrow. Three new episodes monthly. See the full archive at https://seg.org/resources/podcast/.