Two Prizes Awarded in Long Beach at 2011 SIAG/Geosciences Conference
June 21, 2011
"For his seminal contributions to methods, analysis, algorithms, and software for seismic inversion and wave propagation," William W. Symes of Rice University (left) received the SIAG/GS Career Prize at the 2011 SIAM Conference on Mathematical and Computational Issues in the Geosciences, held in Long Beach, California, March 21�24. Established in 2008 to recognize broad and distinguished contributions by outstanding senior researchers to the field of geosciences, the prize also honored Symes for "exceptional influence as a teacher and mentor," as well as for "the fundamental impact his work has had in the industrial community." Shown here with prize committee member Clint Dawson, Symes titled his prize lecture "Seismic Reflection Inversion." Symes was the second recipient of the prize, preceded by Mary Wheeler in 2009.
The SIAG/GS Junior Scientist Prize, also established in 2008 and given for the second time at the Long Beach conference, recognizes outstanding contributions to the field made by a junior researcher in the three years preceding the award. Jennifer Niessner of Robert Bosch GmbH, Germany, pictured (left) with Jean Roberts, who chaired the prize committee, was cited for "innovative contributions to numerical modeling of multi-scale, multi-physics flow and transport phenomena" as well as for important work in developing "physics-based models for two-phase flow in porous media." Niessner gave a prize lecture titled "From Early Groundwater Use to High-tech Applications: Models for Flow in Porous Media."
