People
Research Staff
Email: michael.hudec@beg.utexas.edu
Telephone: 512-471-1428
Mike Hudec is a Senior Research Scientist at the BEG and directs AGL. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wyoming in 1990, and spent the next eight years at Exxon Production Research, where he specialized in salt tectonics, extensional tectonics, and seismic interpretation. His current research interests include shale tectonics, palinspastic restoration of salt structures, and deepwater structural styles.
Email: tim.dooley@beg.utexas.edu
Telephone: 512-471-8261
Tim Dooley is a Senior Research Scientist at the BEG. He received his PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London, in 1994. He is a structural geologist whose specialty is physical modeling of a wide variety of tectonic processes. Tim joined the BEG in 2003 to run and manage the physical modeling facilities focusing primarily on a variety of salt tectonic scenarios, and more recently a new modeling initiative investigating deformation styles in mobile shales.
Email: mariakat@mail.utexas.edu
Telephone: 512-475-9548
Maria is a Civil/Geotechnical Engineer. She earned her ScD from MIT in 2008, her MSc from MIT and her Diploma from NTUA, Greece. She specializes in theoretical soil mechanics and the constitutive modeling of earth materials. She is interested in understanding the stress state within and around salt bodies. Before joining the Bureau, Maria worked as a postdoc for Shell in the Depleted Drilling Group.
Email: mahdi.moghadam@beg.utexas.edu
Telephone: 512-471-1382
Mahdi earned his PhD in Civil-Geotechnical Engineering from UT at Austin in 2013 and his MSc degrees from SUT and UT, Iran. He specializes in reservoir geomechanics, finite element modeling, and mathematical modeling of geomaterials behavior. His current research focuses on the estimation of the stress and pore pressure fields around salt bodies.
Email: frank.peel@beg.utexas.edu
Telephone: 512-471-1609
Frank is a Senior Research Fellow at the BEG. He holds a MA from the University of Cambridge UK, MSc from Imperial College London, and PhD from The University of Oxford, and holds an honorary professorship at Imperial College London. He worked over 30 years in the oil and gas industry; his roles included Structural Geologist at BP and Chief Geologist at BHP Billiton Petroleum. He is interested in all aspects of salt tectonics and structure, and his current interests at AGL include the deposition of giant salt bodies and the interaction between salt and stratigraphy. Outside AGL he studies the science of prospect risk and fluid flow in low-permeability sediments, and is co-director of Appeel Geosciences Ltd.
Email: gillian.apps@beg.utexas.edu
Telephone: +44 7879 486649
Gillian is a Research Fellow at the BEG. She holds an MA in Natural Sciences (Earth Sciences) from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD from the University of Liverpool, where she studied with Professor Trevor Elliott. During 33 years in the oil and gas industry, she worked for Shell, BP and BHPB, and her career spanned basin analysis through exploration to production geophysics. She is a clastic sedimentologist and stratigrapher, with expertise in deepwater reservoirs, salt-sediment interactions, and deepwater fold and thrust belts. Her current research interests focus on deepwater turbidite stratigraphy and reservoir variability in structurally active basins. Outside her work with AGL, Gillian is co-director of Appeel Geosciences Ltd, and she teaches field classes in Haute Provence, France.
Email: juan.soto@beg.utexas.edu
Juan I. Soto received his BSc from the Granada University, Spain, in 1986 and his PhD from the Granada University, Spain, in 1991. Since 1989 he taught different undergraduated and master courses in this university, achieving in 2008 a Full Professor position in Structural Geology and Tectonics. He specializes in structural geology, seismic interpretation, salt and shale tectonic processes, both in orogenic settings and continental margins.
Email: kurt.tollestrup@beg.utexas.edu
Telephone: 281-703-6781
Kurt is a Research Affiliate – Research Fellow at the BEG. He hold a BA in Geology from the University of California – San Diego, and a PhD from the University of Wyoming. His 44-year career has included exploration, appraisal and development of sedimentary hosted energy minerals including uranium, coal and oil & gas that were deposited in a variety of tectonic settings. He has worked with Anglovaal in South Africa and Total, Amoco, Unocal and BP in the USA. During the last 25 years as a geophysicist, he has gained deep experience in seismic interpretation and seismic processing QC for numerous 3D-seismic, depth-imaging projects that have focused on hydrocarbon prospect identification located across large portions of deepwater and subsalt terrain in Gulf of Mexico and Brazil. His current interests at AGL include investigation of hard-to-identify deep salt structures and their control of ancient depositional fairways leading to the abyssal plains.
