Daniel Thomé de Paula - Petrobras
Daniel is a Senior Advisor for Exploration at Petrobras. He's been working for almost 18 years bridging the gap between IT and geophysics and his current mission is to ensure the proper HPC capacity for seismic processing is available to Petrobras at the present and near future. Daniel has a Phd degree and physics as well as a postgraduate degree in Software Engineering and previous experience building the company's internal seismic processing system
Joao Paulo Navarro - Nvidia
João Paulo Navarro is a Computer Scientist and M.Sc. in Computational Modelling, who has dedicated most of his career developing projects for the energy industry in the areas of computer graphics, signal processing and machine learning. At NVIDIA he works as a Solutions Architect, focusing on the design of high-performance systems for large-scale GPU computing, especially for data analytics, machine learning and deep learning applications.
Michele “Mik” Isernia - Amazon
Mik has been involved with technology and innovation, in a variety of positions and companies of various sizes, from large Technology brands to several Startups, around the world, for the last 33 years. In the first part of his career he has been involved in technical computing and HPC for Automotive, Aerospace, Electronics, Scientific Research. Started focusing on the Energy Industry in 2002 with HP, leading E&P strategic partnerships and industry development, with deep engagements with the likes of Schlumberger, Halliburton, Paradigm, IHS, etc. In 2007 he joined Microsoft as Director of Strategic Partnerships for E&P, and led the creation of MURA (Microsoft Upstream Reference Architecture) and worked closely with Schlumberger around the Petrel/Ocean GTM and the adoption of Windows by most of the commercial ISVs. In 2011 he joined Nvidia to lead GPU adoption by the E&P ecosystem, working with the same partners, for Desktop and HPC. In 2012 he joined Hue AS and Headwave Inc. leading strategic partnerships and sales, and he was instrumental to the creation of the current Bluware Corp. with strategic investments from Shell and Energy Ventures PE. In 2020 Mik was recruited by AWS to the newly formed Energy Business Unit. Mik has also been co-founder, advisor and investor in several technology startups, from HPC, to Renewable Energy, and more. Mik’s academic background is Computer Science at the University of Milan, Italy and Executive MBA at the Stanford School of Business in California.
Gerard T. Schuster - KAUST
Gerard Schuster is currently a Professor of Geophysics at King Abdullah University Science and Technology (KAUST) and an adjunct Professor of Geophysics at University of Utah. He was the founder and director of the Utah Tomography and Modeling/Migration consortium from 1987 to 2009, and is now the co-director and founder of the Center for Fluid Modeling and Seismic Imaging at KAUST. Dr. Schuster helped pioneer seismic interferometry and its practical applications in applied geophysics, through his active research program and through his extensive publications, including his book "Seismic Interferometry" (Cambridge Press, 2009). He also has extensive experience in developing innovative migration and inversion methods for both exploration and earthquake seismology.
Ettore Biondi - Stanford University
Ettore Biondi received a B.S. (2010) in geology from the University of Genoa, an M.S. (2012) in geophysics from the University of Pisa, and a diploma (2013) in computational chemistry from the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. He spent almost two years as a research fellow at the University of Milan within the geophysics section of the Earth Science Department. He obtained his Ph.D. in Geophysics from Stanford University in 2021 working within the Stanford Exploration Project. Currently, he is a postdoctoral researcher in the Caltech Seismological Laboratory working on imaging and inversion of distributed acoustic sensing data. His interests are full-waveform and traveltime inversion methodologies applied to active and passive experiments for seismological and seismic exploration applications.
Stuart Farris - Stanford University
Stuart Farris began his Ph.D. at Stanford University in 2016 after graduating magna cum laude from the Colorado School of Mines with a B.S. in Geophysical Engineering and a minor in Computer Science. His work harnesses deep learning and high-performance computing to solve complex problems in the energy industry and has been published in peer-reviewed journals and textbooks. Previously, Stuart has worked as a researcher and data scientist at a number of energy companies, including ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell. Stuart is now investigating Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and the role it will play in reducing humanity’s carbon footprint and serves as an Artificial Intelligence Ph.D. Resident at Google X, the moonshot factory. He is passionate about helping nations, companies, and organizations apply audacious and cutting-edge solutions to the most difficult problems facing the energy industry. Raised in the foothills of the U.S. Rocky Mountains, Stuart loves spending his free time backcountry skiing, mountain biking, and backpacking.