uc geology career days speakers 2017 · uc geology career days speakers 2017 ... geology, followed...

UC Geology Career Days 2017

UC Geology Career Days Speakers 2017

Bill Haneberg – State Surveys/Academia/Service companies

Bill Haneberg has been State Geologist and Director of the Kentucky Geological Survey as well as Research Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences, both at the University of Kentucky, since September 2016. He previously spent 17 years as a consulting engineering geologist, first as a solo practitioner based mainly in Seattle and later with Fugro GeoConsulting in Houston, where he led a cross-disciplinary team of geologists, geophysicists, and engineers working on quantitative hazard and risk assessments for deep-water oil and gas projects around the world. Bill also spent 11 years at New Mexico Tech, where he rose to the position of Senior Engineering Geologist and Assistant Director of the New Mexico Bureau of Mines & Mineral Resources. His work there included applied research on geologic hazards, structurally complicated rift basin aquifer systems, and the relationship between faults and fluid flow in clastic sequences. He has been author or co-author of 160+ published papers and abstracts, co-editor of 3 GSA or AGU monographs, and author of the Claire P. Holdredge award winning book Computational Geosciences with Mathematica. Bill was also the 2011 AEG-GSA Richard H. Jahns Distinguished Lecturer in Engineering Geology and has held adjunct faculty positions at New Mexico Tech, Portland State University, and the University of Cincinnati. A native of Cleveland, he earned a B.S. in geology from Bowling Green State University in 1982 and his M.S. and Ph.D. in geology from Cincinnati in 1985 and 1989, respectively. Bill is licensed as a professional geologist in Kentucky, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin and serves on the Kentucky Board of Registration for Professional Geologists.


Chad Ferguson – Oil & Gas Chad has worked as an exploration and development geologist in the oil and gas industry (Houston, Texas), first with BP America and currently with BHP Billiton Petroleum,

since 2009. His areas of industry expertise include sedimentology/stratigraphy of deepwater clastic systems, play-based exploration geology, and seismic interpretation. He has worked on exploration projects from prospect- to basin-scale, planned and drilled a deep-water production well, led/instructed industry field trips/training courses, and served as a graduate recruiter/interviewer on several occasions. Before joining industry full-time, Chad held several visiting and adjunct academic positions and worked with BP America as an intern.

In 2000, Chad graduated from Hope College with a B.S. in geology, followed by a Masters (’03) and Ph.D. (’09) in paleontology at UC working with Dr. Arnie Miller. With the aid of Drs. Miller and Potter, the encouragement of his wife Vicki, and timely mentorship from a few alumni, Chad was fortunate to secure an opportunity in the oil and gas industry. He is excited to be a repeat guest speaker at the UC Geology Career Days, representing the oil and gas industry, because he sees this as a wonderful opportunity to pay the investment that others made in him forward to the next generation of UC geologists.


Brenda Hunda – Museums

Dr. Brenda Hunda received her B.Sc. with Honors in Paleontology from the University of Alberta in 1997, her M. Sc. in Earth Sciences from the University of Alberta in 1999, and her Ph.D. in Earth Sciences from the University of California, Riverside in 2004. She is currently the Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology at the Cincinnati Museum Center and Adjunct Professor at the University of Cincinnati. Her position includes exhibit design, educational programming development, community outreach in the form of lectures and workshops, curating the largest collection of Upper Ordovician fossils in the world, developing a scientific research program that includes international travel, and playing in the one of the highest diversity fossil sea bottoms in North America.


Jennifer Johnson Krueger – Environmental

Jennifer is an Associate Principal with GZA GeoEnvironmental, Inc. where she is currently managing the Cincinnati office. With over 30 years of technical and project management experience in environmental consulting, Jennifer has worked for a number of small and large local firms. She is a Certified Professional under Ohio’s Voluntary Action Program and has directed the assessment and remediation of many brownfield and regulated sites under various state and federal cleanup programs. Jennifer is currently a Registered Professional Geologist in Kentucky, Illinois, and Georgia and previously held professional geologist registrations in South Carolina and Alabama. In 1983, Ms. Krueger earned a Bachelor of Science degree in geology from Cleveland State University and completed a Master of Science degree in geology from University of Cincinnati in 1991.


Doug Disbennett –Hydrology

Doug had a 25 year career performing computer maintenance and radio communications in the public sector (20 years active duty Navy, 5 years at Clermont County Information Technology Dept.), prior to attending U.C. in September 2010. He earned a Geology B.S in August 2013 and Geology M.S. in April 2014 utilizing the “4+1 Program”. His academic and research interests were focused on hydrology, water quality and human impacts on the water cycle. After graduation, he briefly worked at the local office of a global geotechnical consulting firm. He started at Clermont County Public Health (CCPH) in June 2015, and in August of 2016 earned credentials as a Registered Sanitarian (RS) authorized to practice Environmental Health in the state of Ohio.


Becky Smolinski Finnegan – Environmental

Becky Smolenski Finnigan received her Bachelor of Science in Environmental Geology from Ohio University. She then continued on to the University of Cincinnati where she earned her Master’s in Geology in 2013. During her time at UC, Becky worked on a fellowship at the United States Environmental Protection Agency studying carbon and nitrogen cycling. Since graduation, Becky has been working at AECOM (formerly URS Corporation) as a geologist in the Site Assessment and Remediation group where she works on a wide array of technical projects ranging from karst hydrogeologic studies to regulatory-driven groundwater monitoring programs.


Evan Krekeler – Service companies

Evan Krekeler discovered his love of geology later in life after (thankfully) stumbling upon an introductory geology course taught by Dr. Lewis Owen and has never looked back. During his tenure at UC, Evan was most passionate about field work, spending countless hours out in the field with Dr. Carl Brett and friends measuring outcrops, collecting samples and drawing up strat columns, at times by car headlights or flashlight. He graduated from UC with a geology degree in 2012 and spent a year as a ski bum working in Steamboat Springs, Colorado just "living the dream" before starting his career in the oil & gas industry. He hired on with Schlumberger in 2014 as a Technical Field Specialist where, in training, he showed an aptitude for analytics and was consequently moved into a Technical Field Analyst role. Evan continues to thrive in the technical analytics area and currently works aboard deepwater drill ships and semi-submersible drilling rigs as a Field Technical Analyst III. His plans are to continue working in the field for the next several years gaining technical operations experience and honing his wellsite analysis skills before moving on to wellsite geology.


Julia Wise – State Government

Julia Wise serves as the Manager of the Office of Science and Technology in the New Mexico Economic Development Department. Prior to this position, between February 2016 and June 2016 she held three jobs in super short slightly chaotic succession: technology transfer intern at STC.UNM; researcher at STC.UNM; and manager at Optipulse Photonics.

Other experience includes teaching assistant at the University of Cincinnati, instructor at the University of Northern Kentucky, intern at the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History and Science, Research Assistant at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and six summers as part of a house cleaning service. Her educational background includes an undergraduate degree in biology and chemistry, a master’s degree in Geology, and PhD in Geology. She also serves on the boards of the Venture Acceleration Fund, the New Mexico Technology Council, Kirtland Air Force Base Economic Council, and New Mexico EPSCoR.


Donna C. Jones – Research

Prior to attending the University of Cincinnati, Dr. Donna C. Jones earned a BS in Geosciences at the State University of New York, College at Fredonia in 1995 and an MS from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Rochester in 1998. After finishing a Ph.D. with the Department of Geology at UC in 2004, she began a post-doctoral fellowship in Biology at UC, followed by an additional fellowship with the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Johns Hopkins University. In 2007, she joined the faculty at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in the Division of Plastic Surgery, earning a joint appointment with the Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology in 2013. Her current research interests include general questions of bone biology and the determinants of craniofacial skeletal shape to determine what role muscle force has in generating covariance in craniofacial form and how these influence the dysmorphic states of mandibular hypoplasia and maxillary alveolar clefts. Part of her core philosophy is that the important work of developing and answering questions about the causes of shape determination may need different animal systems because of the various types of data they provide: either through shape alterations in organisms over deep time in response to broad ecological factors and evolutionary transitions, or the molecular and exogenous mechanisms that establish an organism’s shape during its ontogeny. Her background in paleontology keeps her research rooted in evolution, an essential component to understanding how it can constrain development in children with congenital craniofacial defects.


Melissa McMullen – Mining

Melissa McMullen currently works as a Production Geologist for Barrick Gold. She works both in the office and in the field to actively support open pit mining through highwall mapping, 3D modeling and photogrammetry. She designs and executes drill programs for near mine exploration and grade control bring additional ounces into the life of mine. Prior to working with Barrick, Melissa gained valuable experience working as a contractor in environmental site testing and metrics analysis. Her passion for Geology began at age three and was made official by her earning a BS in Geology from University of Cincinnati. She then obtained a MS in Geophysics/Geology from Purdue University and spent a year working for IRIS/PASSCAL.


Daniel M. Sturmer – Facilitator

Dan Sturmer joined the geology faculty at UC as the Paul Potter Assistant Professor of Basin Dynamics in January 2017. Dan’s research focuses on using multiple geologic tools to understand basin evolution through time. Prior to joining UC he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, working on physical models of transitional (turbulent to laminar) flow interactions in the deep marine environment with David Mohrig and Jim Buttles. Dan also spent several years working as an exploration geologist at Shell Exploration and Production Company in Houston, mainly focused on regional to prospect-scale studies in the Gulf of Mexico. Dan earned a B.A. in Business Administration in 2003 and a B.S. in Geology in 2004 from California State University, Fullerton. While at Fullerton, he worked with Diane Clemens-Knott on petrography and geochemistry of metamorphosed volcanosedimentary rocks exposed in a metamorphic roof pendant in the western Sierra Nevada. Dan moved to the University of Nevada, Reno, where he earned an M.S. in Geology in 2007 and a Ph.D. in Geology in 2012. While at UNR, Dan worked with Jim Faulds on kinematics of the Olinghouse fault in western Nevada and with Jim Trexler on carbon-isotope chemostratigraphy of the Pennsylvanian Ely-Bird Spring basin in Nevada and Utah. Dan is excited to start this new adventure at UC and to re-establish and strengthen the connections between the Department of Geology, alumni, and employers.


John Thaeler - Instigatour

Since 2016, John has been the Chief Executive Officer for Vitruvian Exploration III LLC, a private equity funded independent oil and gas exploration and production company located in The Woodlands, TX. John’s passion is to deliver high value growth by leading E&P organizations through the identification, capture, exploration and development of oil and gas resources, while occasionally enjoying a nice cabernet. From 2012 to 2016, John helped led Vitruvian II as COO to its successful sale of its Oklahoma assets to Gulfport Energy. From 1999 to 2012 as SVP of Exploration with Southwestern Energy, he led many E&P activities, including the discovery and development of the Fayetteville Shale, which transformed SWN from a small, utility-based company into the 3rd largest natural gas producer in the U.S. Before joining SWN, John held various technical and managerial positions during a 20-year career at Occidental Petroleum Company where he worked in Africa, the Middle East, Central and South America, and the continental U.S.

In 1977, John escaped from Cleveland State University with his B.S. degree. With much encouragement from his wife Helen, John worked diligently to receive his M.S. in Geology from UC in 1979, working closely with Drs. Maynard, Potter and Pryor to get out and get a job. Not knowing when to quit, John followed all this with an M.B.A. from the University of Houston. He remains a long-standing member of AAPG. In 2013, John was greatly honored to be recognized as a University of Cincinnati Distinguished Alumni. John’s remaining passion is to give back to the department, and in 2014 the Thaeler Careers 101 Fund was kicked off with the goal of helping UC Geology prepare for jobs in industry.

uc geology career days speakers 2017 · uc geology career days speakers 2017 ... geology, followed...

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