Satinder Chopra - 2005
CSEG Meritorious Service Award Recipient Citation for Satinder Chopra
by Thane McKay
Satinder Chopra is a most worthy recipient of the CSEG Meritorious Service Award. He has had a tremendous positive impact on the CSEG and Canadian geophysical community since arriving in Calgary in 1998. He has proven to be a tireless worker and has devoted thousands of hours from his personal time to advance the reputation of the CSEG.
Satinder hails from Shimla, the capital city of Himachal Pradesh, a hilly province in north India. He received his early education at St. Edward School, a missionary school, at the time run by Irish Christian Brothers. After passing the Senior Cambridge examination and subsequently graduating, Satinder went on to acquire M.Sc. and M.Phil. degrees in Physics. After a 7 year teaching stint, he joined ONGC (Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, the national oil company), India as a geophysicist in 1984. During the next 13+ years, he specialized in the processing and interactive interpretation of seismic data, mostly marine. During these years he spent time mastering special processing techniques used for characterizing reservoirs, like AVO, seismic inversion, attribute studies, and VSP processing. He won several awards for his work at ONGC.
Technical writing has been a passion with Satinder. After his teaching stint, he wrote two books on mathematics for grade 9 and 10 students of the Indian School Certificate Examinations, based on the courses that he taught. Later he condensed his seismic data processing experience into the form of a book that he hopes to revise and publish one day. He has published widely in the international journals, on all aspects of techniques describing subsurface reservoirs. Very recently he, along with his co-author Kurt Marfurt (Professor at University of Houston), was invited by the SEG to write a review paper on seismic attributes, reconstructing the historical development of attributes over the last four decades. The paper has been published in 'Geophysics' (Sept. – Oct., 2005 issue). Based on the rich experience that he has gained over the last 21 years, Satinder has written a book (as first author and co-authored by Kurt Marfurt) entitled “Seismic Attributes for Prospect Identification and Reservoir Characterization”, which is being published by the SEG for the 2006 DISC course. Satinder has published more than seven-dozen papers, including the many technical presentations that he has made internationally. He has won the CSEG Award for the Best Paper in 2002 and the CSEG Best Poster Award for posters presented at the CSEG National Convention in successive years from 2002 to 2005.
Satinder migrated to Canada about 8 years ago and here too he has made a mark for himself. He joined CTC Pulsonic in 1998 and thereafter continued his work on Special Processing Projects for the last 7 years at Scott Pickford, Core Labs and Paradigm Geophysical. He now manages the Reservoir Services Group at Arcis Corporation, Calgary. One of Satinder’s strengths is to be open to new technology ideas, implement them by way of software development and subsequent application to seismic data from different parts of the world. Not only that, he continues to communicate the results of his findings to the geophysical community via presentations and publications. His name is now associated with seismic attribute applications, especially coherence. More recently he has headed the development of the application of texture and curvature attributes to seismic data. His interest in the geophysical domain has not been restricted to the narrow field of seismic attributes, as he has focused on other areas equally well, namely high frequency restoration of seismic data, AVO/LMR analysis, azimuth-based processing for subtle fault detection and integrated reservoir characterization. A testimony to this is his publications on these topics.
Satinder has excellent communication skills as evidenced by several presentations and talks that he has delivered. He has been invited to speak at the CSEG luncheon talks, and also the Pacific Coast Section of SEG at Bakersfield, California. His name is well-known internationally and commands great respect. He has been on the SEG’s TLE Editorial Board since November 2005.
Apart from his significant technical accomplishments, Satinder has given selflessly of his time and energies for the CSEG and SEG. Few individuals have contributed as much as Satinder has to the professional societies. He was on the Convention Technical Committees for the CSEG Conventions in 2001, 2002 and 2003. He was the Technical Chairman for the 2004 and 2005 CSEG National Conventions and is also the Technical co-chair for the 2006 Convention which will be held jointly with the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists (CSPG) and the Canadian Well Logging Society (CWLS), at Calgary. In addition, he has continued to serve the two societies in many capacities, including chairing technical sessions, and judging presentations and posters. He has been the Production Editor of the CSEG RECORDER since September 2000 and has been instrumental in raising the overall quality of the publication.
Satinder also chairs the CSEG website committee and is the Chairman of the SEG Publications Committee. He is also a member of the SEG Interpretation Committee, SEG Development and Production Committee and SEG Distinguished Lecturers Committee. He is a certified member of APEGGA and TBPG (Texas Board of Professional Geoscientists).
His friends and colleagues would describe him as a very practical and confident man, calm and deliberate in method and action, honest and forthright, serious, determined, disciplined, organized, focused, optimistic, loyal and patient – a rare combination of so many qualities. He is a tremendous asset to the CSEG.
2005 CSEG Meritorious Services Award for Satinder Chopra
(L to R: Satinder Chopra, Doug Uffen (Chair for the 2005 CSEG Honours
and Awards Committee) and Oliver Kuhn who read out the citation
highlighting Satinder's contributions)
