76: Modern seismic interpretation & what separates humans from machines with Sergey Fomel

In this episode, host Andrew Geary highlights Sergey Fomel's Distinguished Lecturer tour, "Automating seismic data analysis and interpretation." Sergey and Andrew dive deep into automatic picking, why humans will always be essential to data analysis and interpretation, the value of this lecture for someone not familiar with programming, and one tip to help anyone succeed as a geophysicist. Note: Sergey's tour is currently canceled due to COVID-19 coronavirus concerns. In its place, Sergey is offering two, free virtual lectures. Please learn more and register at https://seg.org/podcast/Post/8979. BIOGRAPHY Sergey Fomel is Wallace E. Pratt Professor of Geophysics at The University of Texas at Austin and the director of the Texas Consortium for Computational Seismology (TCCS). At UT Austin, he is affiliated with the Bureau of Economic Geology, the Department of Geological Sciences, and the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences. Sergey received a Ph.D. in geophysics from Stanford University in 2001. For his contributions to exploration geophysics, he has been recognized with a number of professional awards, including SEG’s J. Clarence Karcher Award in 2001 and the EAGE Conrad Schlumberger Award in 2011. He has served SEG in different roles, most recently as the Vice President, Publications. Sergey also serves as the project manager for "Madagascar," an open-source software project for geophysical data analysis. CREDITS Original music by Zach Bridges. This episode was hosted, edited, and produced by Andrew Geary. Thank you to the SEG podcast team: Jennifer Crockett, Ally McGinnis, and Mick Swiney.