Verma earns teaching award
Jun. 20—University of Texas Permian Basin Assistant Professor of Geophysics Sumit Verma will soon receive the Outstanding Educator Award from the Society of Exploration Geophysicists.
Bob Trentham, senior lecturer and research associate in geology, also received the American Association of Petroleum Geologists Distinguished Educator Award. Both men will receive their recognitions at the IMAGE conference in Houston Aug. 28 to Sept. 2 in Houston.
Additionally, Verma and his co-author Shuvajit Bhattacharaya have received AAPG's A.I. Levorsen Award for their innovative work from the Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies. Their work will be presented at the GeoGulf 2023 conference.
Trentham previously received the A.I. Levorsen Award for his presentation at the AAPG SWS in 2017.
"I think it's quite a prestigious award and I am quite honored to receive (it) ... This is from one of the most renowned societies of petroleum geoscience. I thank all the people who did this. A lot of students were involved in this and a lot of colleagues of mine ... It kind of gives us a sense of more responsibility. I feel like I have done good work, but I need to keep doing it. I see that students feel that I have helped them, so I keep doing that, making sure that they are getting all the help that they need," Verma said.
Geophysics is very closely related to geology, trying to solve geological problems using geophysical methods.
"Geophysics is used in many ways. One of the places that you can know about geophysics being used is earthquake seismology; trying to understand earthquakes; how do they happen; and where did that happen; can we locate them; can we find the depth of the earthquakes. That is using all the physics knowledge that we have; how the waves travel ...," Verma said.
"Similarly in petroleum geoscience, they use geophysics for finding oil and gas resources ... We use a technique called seismic. Seismic is a technique where we are using sound waves to send the sound waves into the ground and then the sound bands then get reflected from some contrasting bodies of say, different rock layers and in terms of velocity and density. Then they will come back and then we can use that to find the subsurface structures. It's called 3D seismic surveys," he added.
Verma has completed seven years at UTPB.
He started the geoscience symposium and the sixth edition was held in May and they had about 100 people participate — about 70 in person and some online.
"It was wonderful," Verma said. "We also started a new thing this year ... bringing in high school students and they present some work that they have completed with the help of some of the students from UTPB. ... Thirty students came from high school to present their posters on geoscience and the work was done by them."
"They were divided into teams of three and one person was from Odessa High School and then two people from Permian High School, so it's a collaborative effort," he added.
A mentor was assigned to the teams.
This is something he feels they need to keep doing because it will carry over not just into geoscience, but other fields where they conduct presentations. The students created posters that were evaluated by people from industry and they got to interact with them and understand what's ahead.
Verma earned his bachelor's degree in physics, math and computers from the University of Allahabad; his master's from IDISM Dhambad in geophysics; and his doctorate in geophysics from the University of Oklahoma. He also worked for Reliance Industries Limited in India, which does oil and gas exploration.
"UTPB has been a really great place for me to work. I have really great students who are ... very bright ..." and they are excited about petroleum geoscience, which is Verma's expertise.
"The students are here to learn. They are quite excited, so I'm happy here," he added.
He added that it's kind of unusual for two faculty members to get these awards the same year. It tells them they are doing something right and it attracts applicants from all over the world.
"I received applications ... in the last 15 days from say Nigeria, a number of them, to come to work with me and then some from Iran and from India," Verma said.
