DERI Seminar with Prof Michael J. Pyrcz from The University of Texas at Austin
When: Thursday, February 12, 2026, 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Where: Teams
Speaker: Prof Michael J. Pyrcz from The University of Texas at Austin
Title: Integrating Geostatistics into Data Analytics and Machine Learning
The subsurface resource industry has a long history of working with large, complicated geoscience and engineering datasets. Our community has been working with ‘big data’ for decades, driving the development and establishment of the geostatistical toolbox. As a result, we are uniquely prepared for the data science revolution, as we are further down the road of data-driven workflow development and have insights and experiences to share with the other scientific and engineering domains. The foundation of geostatistics, domain expertise, spatial continuity, scale and uncertainty remain essential, even with advanced deep learning architectures; therefore, many new data analytics and machine learning technologies are not ready off-the-shelf for subsurface applications. I elucidate opportunities to integrate geostatistics into data analytics and machine learning for success in the subsurface.
Bio: Michael is a Professor in the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering and the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin where he teaches and conducts research on subsurface data analytics, geostatistics, and machine learning. In addition, Michael accepted the role of Principal Investigator in the College of Natural Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin, for the Energy Analytics Stream of the Freshman Research Initiative and Inventors Program and teaches widely in the energy industry. Before joining The University of Texas at Austin in Fall 2017, Michael conducted and led research on reservoir data analytics and modeling for 13 years with Chevron’s technology company. He was an enterprise-wide subject matter expert, advising and mentoring on workflow development and best practice.
Michael has written 89 peer-reviewed publications, a Python package, a geostatistics textbook and recently 2 new, free online e-books. He is currently an associate editor with Computers and Geosciences, and an editorial board member for Mathematical Geosciences. Michael’s YouTube channel includes >160 lectures (about 20k views / month) and his GitHub account includes >150 well-documented data analytics and machine learning interactive, educational workflows. Students and working professionals all over the world learn from Michael.
Michael’s courses are organized as playlists on YouTube with links to his free, online e-books, demonstration workflows and interactive dashboards, at https://www.youtube.com/GeostatsGuyLectures.
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Microsoft Teams meeting with Prof MICHAEL J. PYRCZ,
Join: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/37532240880959?p=tdd31IvxSYtmnMITMT
Meeting ID: 375 322 408 809 59
Passcode: Q3Jr3Xr9