NOTE TO JOURNALISTS: A photo of Kristopher Innanen is available
on the Web at http://www.uh.edu/admin/media/nr/2006/11nov/111006kinnanenphoto.html.
WHAT LIES BENEATH: PETROLEUM TARGETS UNEARTHED
BY UH PROF
Kristopher Innanen Earns Karcher Award for Contributions to Seismic
Research
HOUSTON, Nov. 15, 2006 – Enhancing ways to detect petroleum
targets has earned one University of Houston scientist high international
honors.
Kristopher Innanen, an assistant professor of physics at UH, received
the J. Clarence Karcher Award from the Society of Exploration Geophysicists
(SEG) during the SEG International Exposition and 76th Annual Meeting
in New Orleans last month. Only the second from UH to receive this
top honor, Innanen was given the Karcher award to recognize his
significant contributions as a young geophysicist of outstanding
abilities under the age of 35.
“He has developed algorithms to locate petroleum targets
and create high-resolution pictures of the Earth’s subsurface
without any prior knowledge about what lies above the target,”
said Cullen Distinguished Professor of Physics Arthur Weglein. “It
has been my good fortune to have the opportunity to work with many
outstanding colleagues and students over the years, and Kris Innanen
has both led and made tremendous individual contributions to the
history of high-impact fundamental seismic research.”
This is the second year in a row that a researcher from the UH
Mission-Oriented Seismic Research Program
(M-OSRP) under the direction of Weglein has been selected for the
Karcher for innovations in seismic technology in oil and gas exploration.
Last year, Simon A. Shaw, a 2005 UH geosciences Ph.D. graduate,
was the recipient. See related release at http://www.uh.edu/admin/media/nr/2005/07july/071905sshaw_award.html.
Specifically, Innanen was recognized for his work on the development
and implementation of algorithms that process reflection seismic
data. The goal of this research is to pinpoint the location of potential
hydrocarbon targets beneath the Earth’s surface, particularly
when there is little accurate prior knowledge about the subsurface
and when the medium is structurally complex.
“We are making progress and are very encouraged with these
prototype algorithms, whose potential is to act in complex regions
and regions that are difficult to characterize,” Innanen said.
“Since these algorithms are all very non-linear – in
that they essentially involve the measured data being repeatedly
multiplied by themselves – it has become useful in our group
to think of the processing as ‘data talking to data.’
Whether we’re working on extending and implementing multiple
removal algorithms or developing algorithms for locating and resolving
subsurface structure, at the end of the day, the fascination lies
in understanding the inter-data conversations and separating out
the ones for the job at hand.”
Previous work by Weglein and his students and collaborators involved
developing algorithms that make it possible to eliminate multiples
– a form of coherent noise – from seismic data and to
locate and determine subsurface structure in the absence of a velocity
model. The algorithms for removing multiples are considered the
most comprehensive and effective now in use throughout the industry.
“Kris Innanen has contributed to this technical campaign
since his graduate student days and postdoctoral fellowship at the
University of British Columbia, as well as for the past year as
a new faculty member of the UH physics department and M-OSRP,”
Weglein said. “He has advanced the concept, algorithmic development
and depth-imaging capability for processing primaries to accommodate
a larger contrast between the actual earth and a chosen reference
medium. This is a significant accomplishment and important milestone
toward field data application.”
Innanen’s contribution progressed and extended the application
domain of the earlier velocity independent depth-imaging algorithm
developed by Shaw and his collaborators. Innanen also pioneered
the concept and construction of inverse scattering algorithms for
an absorptive, anelastic earth, leading efforts to implement computationally
intensive multiple removal algorithms. The multiple removal methods
are in broad industry use, while the processing objectives for an
anelastic earth are still in the research stage. Derived from the
inverse scattering series, the algorithms being developed by Innanen
and his M-OSRP colleagues, Weglein said, are unique because currently
no direct method exists to find hydrocarbon targets when the structure
above the target is complex and unknown.
Innanen received his Ph.D. in 2003 from the University of British
Columbia in Vancouver and completed bachelor’s and master’s
degrees of science at York University in Toronto. He began his UH
career as a research assistant professor in the physics department
and has been a member of the research personnel in M-OSRP since
2001. He is now an assistant professor in the same department. Innanen
has received numerous honors, such as the Canadian Remote Sensing
Society Award for Best Master’s Thesis from the Canadian Aeronautics
and Space Institute in 1999.
M-OSRP is a research program and petroleum industry consortium,
started in January 2001 at UH, to address problems with solutions
that would have the most significant positive impact on the ability
to locate and produce hydrocarbons. For more information, visit
http://www.mosrp.uh.edu/.
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