Scholarships

Colorado School of Mines Memorial Scholarship

The Colorado School of Mines Memorial Scholarship is awarded to a CSM graduate student in support of excellence in geoscience research. Applicants focusing on geology, geophysics, or any other earth science-related sub-discipline, are encouraged to apply.  This scholarship was initiated by John Lockridge, a prominent petroleum geologist and geologic community leader in Denver, and is supported in his memory by his wife, Erika, friends, and colleagues. John was one of the three founders of the RMAG Foundation, serving as a Trustee for thirteen years.

The 2026 Colorado School of Mines Memorial Scholarship was awarded to:

Ahmed Ahmed, Ph.D. Candidate, Geophysics, Colorado School of Mines

Ahmed’s project develops a high-resolution time-lapse seismic imaging methodology to improve monitoring of subsurface reservoir changes for applications such as hydrocarbon production and carbon dioxide storage. Ahmed addresses a key limitation of existing approaches, noise and artifacts in baseline and monitor differences, by advancing beyond acoustic methods to a fully elastic framework. Specifically, he proposes and implements a joint full waveform inversion algorithm for tilted transverse isotropic media that simultaneously estimates baseline and monitor models across multiple parameters, including P wave and S wave velocities and anisotropic properties. This approach is designed to better capture subsurface complexity while reducing spurious time lapse artifacts.

Ahmed’s work focuses on building and validating this multiparameter joint inversion framework through synthetic and realistic benchmark testing. By integrating multiscale optimization, spatially weighted regularization, and strategies to address wavelet non repeatability and parameter crosstalk, he produces cleaner and more interpretable time lapse signals. Preliminary results demonstrate improved imaging with reduced noise compared to traditional methods. The outcome is a robust and reproducible workflow for elastic tilted transverse isotropic time-lapse full waveform inversion, providing a practical tool for reservoir monitoring and more reliable interpretation of subsurface changes.

Ahmed’s work is under the direction of Dr. Ilya Tsvankin.

Recent winners of the Colorado School of Mines Memorial Scholarship:

2025 Christopher Matson, Colorado School of Mines

2024 Rachel Williams, Colorado School of Mines

2023 Ahmed Tourei, Colorado School of Mines