Dr. Cliff Voss, the 2015 Geological Society of America’s Birdsall-Dreiss Lecturer, visited Syracuse University on October 21. Dr. Voss is a senior scientist with the National Research Program of the U.S. Geological Survey and an internationally recognized expert in groundwater modeling.
During his time on campus, Dr. Voss met with Earth Sciences and Engineering faculty and graduate students. His visit culminated with his presentation entitled “Informing Management of the World’s Largest Groundwater Systems with Simply-Structured Model Analysis.” In his seminar, Voss reviewed the typical difficulties in characterizing aquifer systems and argued that simply-structured models are the most effective means of dealing with inevitable uncertainties. Using examples from Bangladesh and the Nubian aquifer in North Africa, Voss showed how simple models can answer water-management challenges in large aquifer systems.
Kevin Bohacs is a Senior Research Scientist at ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company. He visited Syracuse University to attend EMPOWER’s External Advisory Committee meeting. While he was here, he led a short course for Earth Science graduate students entitled “Sequence-Stratigraphic Analysis of Shales.” About 20 graduate students participated in a day-long field trip to explore local examples of Marcellus shale. After returning to campus, they participated in a hands-on workshop that examined the expression and correlation of depositional sequences in seismic, well-log, core, and outcrop data using Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic examples. The short course was facilitated by 