Near Surface Research Award

The SEG Near Surface Research Award endowment provides research grants to support undergraduate or graduate students in engaged in near-surface geophysics research in a relevant academic program at an accredited institution. Awards are intended to offset expenses directly related to the awardee's near-surface geophysics research.

Near-surface geophysics typically involves the application of geophysical techniques to the study of subsurface targets other than oil and gas. Depths of investigation may range from less than a meter to greater than a kilometer, and applications include (but are not limited to) hydrogeologic studies, earthquake hazard assessment, geotechnical evaluation, archeological investigations, and agricultural studies.

The SEG Near-Surface Geophysics Technical Section is the founding supporter of this endowment.

Award Recipients

• 2025 Nuray Abbasova - Facies Associations and Sea-Level Drop
• 2025 Keeya Beausoleil - Quantifying Subglacial Water Flow Using Glaciohydraulic Tremor: A Multi-Glacier Analysis
• 2024 Daniel May - Multi-Offset Radio-Echo Sounding for Inferring Englacial and Subglacial Thermal Conditions and Material Properties
• 2023 Ramadan Abdelrehim - Subsurface controls on Padre Island dune morphology: Constraints from Ground Penetrating Radar, time domain, and frequency domain electromagnetic techniques
• 2022 Heidi Harwick - A Study of Geology and associated Karst Features within the Balcones Fault Zone and Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone on the UTSA Campus in San Antonio, Texas
• 2021 Stephen Slivicki – Time-lapse Active Source Seismic Response of Natural CO₂ Gas Migration Through a Shallow Reservoir
• 2020 Daniel Locci Lopez – Point Bar Systems Geophysical Characterization at Low Effective Pressure During Seasonal River Stages in the Lower Mississippi River Valley
• 2019 Patrick Duff – Understanding Shallow Marine Clastic Reservoir Heterogeneity from Modern Analogues Resolved by GPR and Drone Imagery
• 2018 Alexander Yablokov – Landslide Hazard Research by Seismic Methods
• 2017 Sina Saneiyan - Long Term Monitoring of Microbial Induced Soil Strengthening Processes
• 2016 Brady Flinchum -