Geoscience, engineering students top regionals, advance to finals
March 31, 2015
907-474-7541
03/30/15
A team of four University of Alaska Fairbanks geoscience and engineering graduate students won first place and $1,000 at a regional 2015 Imperial Barrel Awards competition recently. They will advance to the international IBA competition in Denver, Colorado, in May.
Two graduate students —Jacob Rosenthal and Deirdre LaBounty — and undergraduate Rafael Orozco are from the geosciences department, in the College of Natural Science and Mathematics. Panav Hulsurkar is a petroleum graduate student from the College of Engineering and Mines. Associate professor Catherine Hanks is their adviser.
The team competed against six other universities from California and Oregon in IBA's Pacific Section. This year, 154 teams competed in twelve regional IBA competitions across the world. The first-place winners of each competition will advance to the international IBA competition.
The American Association of Petroleum Geologists sponsors the competition, which draws geoscience students from universities around the world. Teams can have up to five students, a faculty adviser and two industry professionals, who serve as consultants. Rebecca Bailey from BP and Tom Homza from Shell acted as mentors for the team.
AAPG gives the teams a data set about a real place, including information on its geology and geophysics. Students have eight weeks to analyze the data and determine the gas and oil potential of the area before presenting their findings to a panel of industry judges at the regional competition.
The geosciences department has been competing in the IBA regional competition for four years and has placed in the top three each time.
ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Associate professor Catherine Hanks, 907-474-5562, clhanks@alaska.edu