Laura Valentina Socco

Laura Valentina Socco

Latest company	Assistant Professor in Applied Geophysics in Politecnico di Torino- Turin, Italy
MSc	Civil Engineering
PhD	Environmental Geoengineering
MSc university	Politecnico di Torino (Technical University of Turin)
PhD university	Politecnico di Torino

Laura Valentina Socco is an associate professor in Applied Geophysics and Head of the Geophysics Lab at Politecnico di Torino (Technical University of Turin).

Dr Socco works on developing geophysical techniques for near surface investigation in applications ranging from, seismic hazard and engineering, to hydrocarbon exploration, environment and cultural heritage. In the last fifteen years, she has focused her research work on surveying techniques based on the propagation of seismic surface waves for the seismic and geotechnical site characterisation. More recently she has focused on geophysical data integration techniques.

Dr Socco is author of more than 110 scientific publications in peer reviewed journals and conferences. Personal impact factors h and g are equal to 18 and 33, respectively, with more than 1560 total citations (source Google Scholar). She has been member of Research Committee and Education Committee of EAGE and DL Committee of SEG and she has been vice-chairperson and chair-person of the Near Surface Division Committee of EAGE and member of EAGE Board (2014-16). She is Editor of “Geophysics” and she has been Assistent and Associate Editor of “Geophysics” and "Near Surface Geophysics".  She has been Convener of several international workshops.

SEG 2019 Outstanding Educator Award

Laura Valentina Socco of Politecnico di Torino is an excellent teacher and mentor. She has an instructional style based on discovery and thought rather than simply asking students to remember what she presents in class. Her graduate students report that she treats them as colleagues rather than as subordinates. When she brings them with her to professional conferences, she introduces them to internationally prominent colleagues. She encourages them to publish their research and helps them find professional career opportunities when they finish their degrees.

Biography Citation of the 2019 SEG Outstanding Educator Award

by Sebastiano Foti

Laura Valentina Socco is a brilliant and successful educator with more than 20 years of experience at Politecnico di Torino, where she has taught the course in applied geophysics for the master’s program in Environmental and Land Engineering and later the course in geophysical prospecting for the master’s program in Petroleum and Mining Engineering. As an educator she has been consistently able to conjugate a strong background of consolidated knowledge with up-to-date and ground-breaking advancements brought in from her outstanding research activity. In this respect, her activity as an itinerant educator traveling the world as the Fall 2013 SEG Near Surface Global Lecturer must be mentioned. In that role, she delivered a stimulating and inspiring talk on the use of surface-wave analysis for near-surface characterization, a research topic on which her excellence is recognized worldwide.

Valentina has been a great mentor for her master’s and PhD students, always able to join a solid and rigorous scientific approach with the ability to create a friendly and constructive working environment for her students. Many of those students are nowadays enrolled in research institutions and in industry all around Europe.

Valentina is chair of the College of Environment and Land Engineering at Politecnico di Torino, which includes a bachelor’s and two master’s programs. She is also academic advisor of the SEG Student Chapter of Politecnico di Torino.

Valentina dedicates this award to the memory of her beloved father, Carlo, who also was an outstanding researcher and educator in the field of urban and environmental planning.

"L. V. Socco, 2016"

Honors and Awards

• Honorable Mention in the category Best Paper in Geophysics -2016 Paolo Bergamo for their paper P- and S-wave velocity models of shallow dry sand formations from surface wave multimodal inversion

• Conrad Schlumberger Award 2014 (EAGE)

• In 2013 SEG Honorary Lecturer, Near Surface.

• Honorable Mention in the category Best Paper in Geophysics -2012 with Paolo Bergamo and Daniele Boiero, for their paper Retrieving 2D structures from surface-wave data by means of space-varying spatial windowing.

• Honorable Mention in the category Best Paper in Geophysics -2011 Paolo Bergamo Margherita Maraschini, Daniele Boiero, and Sebastiano Foti, for their paper Scale properties of the seismic wavefield perspectives for full-waveform matching.

External links

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