Advancing Data Analytics & Machine Learning for Exploration Geophysics

18–21 May 2026
Houston, Texas, USA

The SEG Research Committee is happy to announce the Advancing Data Analytics and Machine Learning for Exploration Geophysics Workshop scheduled for 18–21 May 2026 in Houston, Texas, USA.

This represents the second workshop on machine learning (ML) for the energy industry. The first workshop was organized in Houston, May 2022 with great success, offering 80 attendees 43 talks. Since then, there has been significant progress in developing new ML/AI algorithms, particularly Gen AI, and adopting them into G&G. Additionally, ML/AI were among the most popular topics for technical sessions and post-convention workshops during the last four IMAGE conventions, and the Gen AI and Physics-informed Special Section in The Leading Edge attracted a high number of submissions. The strong interest necessitates this second workshop to collect the most recent advances in ML/AI and showcase its value in transforming the energy industry.

Unlike other ML-related workshops for SEG that focus on a geophysical topic, this workshop will focus on cutting edge AI advancements broadly applied to geoscience to

1. Collect the most recent advances in AI/ML and review the state-of-the-art algorithms in time-series data analysis computer vision, large model development, generative AI, etc.
2. Showcase their applications to G&G data processing, interpretation, inversion, integration, etc.
3. Stimulate brainstorming and discussions about their values to the energy industry and the road ahead

Technical topics to be covered: ML for G&G data processing, interpretation, inversion, integration, large models, renewable energy.

Keynote Speakers

• Wadii El Karkouri

  EVP — Imaging and Technology, TGS

  Keynote Title: Industrializing foundation AI: Building the operating system of the subsurface

  Wadii El Karkouri is the Executive Vice President of Imaging and Technology at TGS, based in Houston. His mission is to lead a global team of professionals who deliver high-quality seismic imaging and interpretation services, leveraging geophysical and digital technologies. Prior to this role, Wadii was a Global Sales Director of Amazon Web Services Energy and Utilities. AWS delivers the broadest and deepest cloud platform and industry solutions for energy companies to transform legacy operations. Prior to this, his experience was mainly in the oilfield services industry, with SLB.

  

• Abdulmohsen Ali

  Geophysicist — Saudi Aramco

  Keynote Title: From data to decisions: Operationalizing agentic AI for geoscience workflows

  Abdulmohsen Alali is a geophysicist at Saudi Aramco’s EXPEC ARC, leading geophysical machine learning initiatives focused on AI-driven automation and decision support for subsurface workflows. His work spans seismic and well-log analytics, velocity model building and diffraction-focused interpretation, and scalable deployment of ML in operational settings.

  

• Renjun Wen

  President & CEO — subsurfaceAI Inc.

  Keynote Title: How machine learning is changing the daily work of seismic interpreters

  Renjun Wen is the founder and CEO of SubsurfaceAI Inc. (formerly Geomodeling Technology Corp.), an international geoscience software company headquartered in Calgary, Canada. He holds a Ph.D. in Petroleum Geology from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), completed in 1995. Following his doctoral studies, Dr. Wen conducted contract research at the Statoil Research Center later that year. In 1996, he founded Geomodeling Technology Corp. in Calgary, building on his research experience at NTNU and Statoil.

  Dr. Wen has published extensively in the fields of reservoir modeling, sub-seismic fault modeling, geostatistical image processing, seismic attribute analysis, and, more recently, AI applications in geoscience. He played a leading role in the development of innovative reservoir modeling technologies through the SBED Joint Industry Project (2000–2010), a collaborative effort involving nine major international oil companies.

  He currently serves on the editorial board of Petroleum Geoscience (EAGE) and is a registered Professional Geologist with APEGA (Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta). An interview about his professional journey, published by the Canadian Society of Exploration Geophysicists (CSEG), is available at https://csegrecorder.com/interviews/view/an-interview-with-renjun-wen.

  

• Song Hou

  Head of AI Lab — Viridien

  Keynote Title: Transforming geoscience workflows with generative AI and foundation models

  Dr. Song Hou is the Head of AI Lab at Viridien, where he leads a global team developing advanced AI solutions for geoscience. He holds a Ph.D. in Geophysics from the University of Edinburgh. His work spans AI-driven seismic processing and interpretation, remote sensing analytics, and large-scale document intelligence and knowledge retrieval. His recent focus areas include seismic foundation models, multimodal large language models, and agentic AI systems.

  

• Tariq A. Alkhalifah

  Professor — KAUST

  Keynote Title: The power of neural representation in seismic inverse problems

  Tariq A. Alkhalifah is a professor in the Physical Sciences and Engineering Division. He joined KAUST in June 2009. Before he joined KAUST, Alkhalifah was research professor and director of the Oil and Gas Research Institute at King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology (KACST). Previously, he held the positions of associate research professor, assistant research professor, and research assistant at KACST. From 1996 to 1998, Alkhalifah served as a postdoctoral researcher for the Stanford Exploration Project at Stanford University, United States. He received the J. Clarence Karcher Award from the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) in 1998 and the Conrad Schlumberger Award from the European Association for Geoscientists & Engineers (EAGE) in 2003, and served as an honorary lecturer for the SEG in 2011. He also received the Virgil Kauffman Gold medal from the SEG in 2023. Alkhalifah received his doctoral degree in geophysics and his master’s degree in geophysical engineering, both from the Colorado School of Mines, United States. He holds a bachelor’s degree in geophysics from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia.

  Alkhalifah’s research interest include seismic imaging and waveform inversion in complex media, and recently his interest included the utilization of machine learning for such objectives.

  

• Aria Abubaker

  Global Head of Geophysics Digital Technology & Scientific Advisor — SLB

  Keynote Title: Role of AI for subsurface workflows

  Aria is currently the Global Head of Geophysics Digital Technology & Scientific Advisor for SLB. Before this current assignment he spent about six years creating and establishing Data Science organization for Digital Technology at SLB. Aria has a degree in electrical engineering and Ph.D. degree in computational sciences from Delft University of Technology in Delft, The Netherlands. He was the 2020 SEG-AAPG Distinguished Lecturer and the 2014 SEG North America Honorary Lecturer. Aria is the recipient of 2022 Conrad Schlumberger Award of EAGE and 2022 Honorary Membership Award of SEG. He holds over 55 patents/patent applications, and has published eight book & book chapters, over 125 peer-reviewed scientific articles, over 250 peer-reviewed conference papers, and over 60 conference abstracts.

  

• Sergey Fomel

  Wallace E. Pratt Professor of Geohysics, The University of Texas at Austin Director, Texas Consortium for Computational Seismology

  Keynote Title: AI-assisted seismic interpretation beyond visual recognition

  Sergey Fomel is the Wallace E. Pratt Professor of Geophysics at The University of Texas at Austin and the director of the Texas Consortium for Computational Seismology (TCCS). He earned a PhD in geophysics from Stanford University in 2001. Sergey is an honorary member of SEG and the Geophysical Society of Houston. He served SEG as Vice President for Publications (2017-2019) and as Distinguished Lecturer (2020). Sergey devotes part of his time to developing “Madagascar,” an open-source software project for geophysical data analysis.

  

• Minjun Park

  Research Scientist, X

  Keynote Title: Next-generation workflows: From synthetic data to AI agents

  Minjun Park is a Research Scientist at X, the moonshot factory (formerly Google X), where he works on the integration of Generative AI into subsurface applications. With a PhD in Geophysics from Stanford University, Minjun sits at the intersection of Earth science and advanced machine learning. His work focuses on building sophisticated AI agents, large language models, and 3D synthetic data pipelines designed to solve high-stakes geoscientific challenges.

  

Organizing Committee

Chair

• Haibin Di, SLB

Lead Organizers

• Sergio Chávez-Pérez, Instituto Mexicano del Petróleo
• Vladimir Kazei, Aramco Americas
• Umair Waheed, KFUPM
• Tao Zhao, SLB

Location

Motiva Conference Center
3^rd Floor
One Allen Center
500 Dallas St.
Houston, Texas

For more information, please email Debbie Mitchell, SEG Meeting Planner, [email protected]