Solving Seismic Inverse Problems

Friday, February 17, 2023

12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

About the Event

Seismic inversion is generally carried out by iterative data fitting in which the model updates are evaluated by solving the corresponding physics-based forward modeling. Local optimization methods are commonly used for finding an optimal model. Choice of the optimization method is also non-trivial; it depends on the accuracy and computational speed. During the last decade, we have witnessed a resurgence of data-driven methods called machine learning, which are generally agnostic to the physics of the underlying problem. Here, we discuss several hybrid data-driven and model-driven methods that can take advantage of the salient features of the two apparently different classes of methods for parameter estimation. We discuss how the unsupervised and reinforcement learning based deep neural network can be augmented with the knowledge of the physics of the problems. Our applications to seismic inversion including AVO, tomography and full waveform inversion are quite encouraging and therefore, motivate us to investigate these approaches further.

About the Speaker: Mrinal K. Sen, Jackson Chair in Applied Seismology, University of Texas at Austin

Mrinal K. Sen is a professor of Geophysics and holder of the Jackson Chair in Applied Seismology at the Department of Geological Sciences and Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin. During 2013 and 2014, Sen served as the director of the National Geophysical Research Institute, Hyderabad, India. He received his integrated M.Sc. degree from ISM Dhanbad and Ph.D. from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, U.S.A., in 1987. Sen is known internationally for his work on theoretical and computational seismology and geophysical inversion. He has published over 200 peer reviewed journal papers and two books on Geophysical Inversion. He has received many awards, including an honorary membership of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists “for extraordinary contributions as a geophysicist, educator and author,” the Joseph C. Walter Award for Research Excellence and the Distinguished Educator Award at the University of Texas. He is the recipient of the 2018 Virgil Kauffman gold medal of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists for making significant advancements in the science of exploration geophysics in the last five years.  

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