Houston, TX, 5 August 2022 — The Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) today announced results of its 2022 Board of Directors and District Representatives election.
Arthur C. H. Cheng was selected by SEG Voting Members to serve as President-elect for 2022–2023. Following his one-year term as President-elect, Cheng will assume the office of SEG President following IMAGE 2023 scheduled for 27 August–1 September 2023 in Houston, Texas.
Cheng has served SEG in many capacities. He is the 2022 senior assistant editor for GEOPHYSICS and will serve as the 2023 Editor-in-Chief. Cheng also is a mentor and sponsor of SEG’s EVOLVE program and vice chair of the SEG Foundation Board of Directors. He has served as a representative on the SEG Council, as a member of the Board of Directors, as chair of the Research Committee, and as organizer of multiple workshops. He also was one of the cofounders of the SEG Advanced Modeling Corporation (SEAM).
He received the Life Membership Award from SEG in 2013, the Distinguished Technical Achievement Award from the Society of Petrophysicists and Well Log Analysts in 2015, the Formation Evaluation Award from the Society of Petroleum Engineers in 2016, and Honorary Membership from SEG in 2021.
Cheng received a bachelor’s degree with distinction in engineering physics from Cornell University and an ScD in geophysics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1978. He is an adjunct professor in the Earth Systems Science Programme at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is a cofounder, with Yunyue Elita Li, of the Sustainability Geophysics Project. Prior to taking his current position, he was a professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He was a cofounder of the Earth Resources Laboratory at MIT, where he was a principal research scientist and project leader for the Borehole Acoustics and Logging Consortium from 1983 to 1996. He worked for Western Atlas, Baker Hughes Inteq, SensorWise, Rock Solid Images, and Halliburton Technology in various managerial and consulting capacities before returning to academia at NUS in 2014. He has published more than 150 papers and holds 29 patents. He has coauthored two books on borehole acoustics.
Over his 48 years as an SEG member, Cheng has worked across the full spectrum of SEG’s most important functions. Cheng credits his passion for geophysics and thorough knowledge about SEG as an organization for putting him in the best position to transform SEG at this critical moment of energy transition.
“I recently served on the Strategic Options and the Geothermal task forces to address the existential challenges that SEG faces today,” Cheng said. “SEG needs to accelerate the transformation to address the issues facing our global community: sustainable energy supply, carbon capture and sequestration, urban development, water resources, and environmental equity. As disciplinary boundaries are melted down by digital transformation, SEG needs to partner with like-minded organizations to continue driving innovation and revolution, as well as serving the traditional oil and gas sector. Finally, SEG needs to expand our business model and coordinate with our Foundation to generate financial support to serve a global membership.”
Cheng was recently appointed to serve on SEG’s Transformation Task Force created by President Shaughnessy to develop guidelines, vision, and processes for SEG’s transformation. With his election as President-elect, he will lead the task force beginning in September.
Also elected to the Board of Directors were Mauricio D. Sacchi, Second Vice President; Mike Mellen, Treasurer; and Directors at Large Sergio Chávez-Pérez and Catherine Truffert. Completing the slate of directors for the 2022–2023 term is incoming President Ken Tubman, Joseph Reilly as First Vice President; Jeffrey Shragge as Vice President, Publications; Anna Shaughnessy as Past President; Allen Bertagne as Chair of the Council; and Sherif Hanafy, Brandy Hawkins, Olga Nedorub, and Ana Curcio as Directors at Large. The new Board will take office following the final function of IMAGE ’22.
The following SEG members have been elected to serve as District Representatives: District 1, Shawn New; District 2, Tracy Stark; District 3, Sarah Gach; District 4, Scott Gorham; District 5, Oliver Kuhn; District 6, Luis Donoso; District 7, Helene Hafslund Veire; District 8, Florian Bleibinhaus; District 9, Joseph Ebeniro; District 10, Abdullatif A. Al-Shuhail; District 11, Xuri Huang; and District 12, James Shadlow. District Representatives took office on 1 August 2022 and will serve until 31 July 2024.