Mauricio Sacchi - 2012
CSEG Medal Recipient Citation for Mauricio Sacchi
by Dr. Mostafa Naghizadeh
With this award, the CSEG recognises Dr. Sacchi’s outstanding contributions to the field of exploration seismology in high resolution inversion, seismic wave field reconstruction, and imaging methods. In addition, we honour Dr. Sacchi’s pillar efforts toward the development of novel technologies, mentoring of graduate student and teaching seismic data processing in Canada.
Mauricio D. Sacchi was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he received his Diploma in Geophysics from The National University of La Plata, Argentina, in 1988. After receiving his Ph.D. in Geophysics from UBC in 1996, he joined the Department of Physics at the University of Alberta and today, as a full professor, directs the Signal Analysis and Imaging Group, an industry sponsored initiative for advanced research in signal processing and imaging. The SAIG group has attracted international attention with its current focus on seismic wavefield regularization theory.
Dr. Sacchi's publication record is very impressive and covers various topics; all of them feature high quality technical content and are published mostly in prestigious scientific Journals. His publication record to date is close to 150 journal papers and refereed conference abstracts. With Tad Ulrych he co-authored the book "Information-based processing and inversion with applications" published by Elsevier in 2005. He has made great contributions to the areas of inverse problems, least-squares migration, seismic data reconstruction, and seismic inversion. His 1998 IEEE paper on high-resolution interpolation and extrapolation methods is a monumental article on this topic. Another major contribution of Mauricio’s is in the area of seismic data reconstruction methods. His development of 5D interpolation methods by supervising one of his Ph.D. students, Dr. Bin Liu, has led to an industrial quality interpolation method, which is now widely used by various companies.
Mauricio holds membership with the EAGE, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), CSEG and SEG. He has taught various Geophysics courses to undergraduate and graduate level students. At the University of Alberta he has been teaching about 3 courses per year covering signal processing, introduction to seismic imaging, global seismology and inverse problems. Only recently, his teaching load has decreased to one course per year because he has taken over the role of head of the department of Physics. He has developed and instructed short courses for industry, and for the Canadian Society of Exploration Geophysicists (CSEG), The Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) and EAGE in the areas of seismic signal theory, transform methods for signal enhancement, and seismic inversion.
It is with great pleasure and respect that the CSEG presents Dr. Mauricio Sacchi with our highest honour, the CSEG Medal.
