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Tariq Alkhalifah
Tariq Alkhalifah
Let me introduce myself
My name is Tariq Alkhalifah II (the second, just kidding we are not actually counting) and have been appointed Professor of Geophysics in the division of Physical Sciences and Engineering at KAUST. I started Summer 2009.
Prior to joining KAUST, I was a Research Professor and Director of the Oil and Gas Research Institute at King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology (KACST). I have previously held the positions of Associate Research Professor, Assistant Research Professor and Research Assistant at KACST. From 1996 to 1998, I served as a Postdoctoral Researcher ( I will call it as a service as it was not easy doing a post doc at the mist of the tech bubble, hard work, relatively low pay, especially relative to Netscape employees at the time) for the Stanford Exploration Project at Stanford University, USA.
I received the J. Clarence Karcher Award from the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) in 1998 and the Conrad Schlumberger Award from European Association for Geoscientists & Engineers (EAGE) in 2003. Both awards boosted my ego to a point where my closest friends had to book an appointment with me a month in advance just to say hi, but recent events brought me back to Earth. Believe or not, I just got the Virgil Kauffman gold medal 2023 from the SEG, and it was related to my machine learning work.
I am a member of the SEG and EAGE, both boost membership #s north of 30000.
I received my doctoral and master degrees in Geophysics, both from Colorado School of Mines, USA with Professor Ken Larner. I hold a bachelor‘s degree in Geophysics from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia.
My research interest is in seismic modeling, imaging and inversion. In particular, I look at developing new partial differential equations to simplify modeling, imaging and possibly inversion, with a special focus on anisotropic media. I am also interested in machine learning and its application in waveform modeling and inversion. This includes parameter estimation in anisotropic complex media. I am also interested in machine learning in ways that is beyond the conventional. Please look at the research page.