Earth and Environmental Science

Dr. Allison Malcolm, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador

Geophysics: Combining Technology and Fundamental Science to Improve our World

Many key problems in the world are fundamentally geoscience problems.  We will play a vital role in locating critical minerals, sequestering CO₂ underground, finding energy resources, selecting sites for wind farms, and continuing to develop systems that warn populations of natural disasters.  These contributions require an understanding of topics from geoscience to computer science and all are affected by and contribute to how technology changes.  Drawing on contributions from my team and others, I will highlight a series of examples in which we use and develop technology tailored to specific geoscience problems.  We will discuss ‘right-sizing’ computations for CO₂ sequestration, adapting machine-learning techniques to improve our understanding of geological structures like faults and mineral deposits, and even how we can use Minecraft to teach geoscience to others.  My goal is for geoscience students to see some new applications and the technologies underlying them, for other science and engineering students to see exciting applications of their studies, and for experienced geophysicists to see some new applications and share toolkits to promote the breadth and excitement of geophysics.