Interview with Sven Treitel

By Sofia Pannunzio

The webinar The MIT Geophysical Analysis Group and Its Influence on Seismic Processing was held the 21 of October, and falls perfectly within the realm of what we can call “The Dawn of Digitalization.” It was presented by Enders Robinson and Sven Treitel, both pioneers of the digitalization of signal processing. This webinar covered the fundamental contributions that can be considered the foundation of what has evolved to today’s hot topics of Big Data, Machine Learning, and AI.

Enders and Sven talked about the early development of Digital Signal Processing in the Geophysical Analysis Group at MIT, which is considered one of the highlights of 20th-century science and technology. Furthermore, they shared with us part of the difficulties they had to face when boosting this kind of innovative technology.

Check out the interview with Sven Treitel:

What do you consider were the biggest challenges you had to face when implementing something totally innovative in a context where digital tools were still underdeveloped? Probably there were many people against your ideas, how did you deal with those moments?

There were a lot of geophysicists who were against my ideas at those times, one of them ensure me that what we were doing could be done just theoretically but there was no way that we could assimilate analog filter in a digital computer. That was one of the resistances that we had to contain, and this is one of the reasons why the MIT Geophysical Analysis Group ended in 1957.

Apart from that, at first, most of the oil company representatives could not understand what we were trying to accomplish. It was only after I was able to join an oil company, talked to the management and convinced people there that these methods were worth investigating, that this technology took off.

Do you think that the existence of a connection between research and industry is essential to ensure a good industrial development in the future? And in addition to this, do you think that companies and society are aware of the importance of geosciences for industrial development?

Many oil companies have stopped investing in research development. Nowadays, geophysical exploration research is mainly carried out by universities. Although they do some research, this is not enough. The connection between academia and industry is certainly essential. However, there are currently major problems and the industry is facing a difficult moment, which somehow requires attention.

What career advice would you give to aspiring young geophysicists today?

Always consider alternative employment possibilities. You should prepare yourself and get skills. One that comes to mind, and which is taken by a number of colleagues, is image processing. There are no limits for developing this. It is a crucial discipline in exploration geophysics, but it is not limited only to seismic processing, you can use the same techniques to process geographic images, medical images, and more. The computer and imaging skills should be considered by anybody entering in our profession.

How do you look at artificial intelligence (AI) in Geophysics, especially in seismic imaging?

First of all, I take issue with the term “Artificial Intelligence”, because, how can we talk about artificial intelligence when we do not understand the human intelligence? So, to me, that term is very misfiring. I look at these techniques as very sophisticated. We do not understand what we are doing but we do understand that the systems under the name of “artificial intelligence” or “machine learning” are actually working. I do not understand that fact. I think that those techniques are interesting and promising, but I consider more promising those techniques which use the physics base than the ones which do not use the physics guidance.

Do you see any current technique in geophysical analysis that might revolutionize the field again?

Well, machine learning is promising and it is just in the beginning stages, but something impossible to predict, is what would happen tomorrow. I can see that there are efforts to combine machine learning methods with inversion methods, and I think that those are in the right direction.

You are the co-author of an important book, as well as the co-author of four SEG best papers awards. Which of them do you like the most? And which one do you think represents your contribution to the field of exploration geophysics the most?

The first one is my favorite, which was written in collaboration with Enders Robinson, because science is a collaborative activity. This is my favorite because this contains more about the early efforts that we made, at first, in the GAG group.

What do you recommend to the students of geophysics?

I recommend that they take courses in related fields because in today environments you need to be prepared to jump into any sector. And specializing too narrowly in one field can be dangerous. Take in mind other fields, related ones, such as electrical engineering subjects. Just generalize and do not particularize.

Sven Treitel is a graduate of MIT, where he received his PhD in geophysics in 1958. From 1958 to 1960 he worked for Chevron in Cuba and then joined Amoco’s Research Center in Tulsa, OK. While at Amoco, he carried out investigations in seismic signal processing and in the numerical simulation of seismic wave propagation. For some twenty years he was a co-editor of Elsevier's Handbook of Geophysical Exploration series. With Enders Robinson, he wrote the book Geophysical Signal Analysis, published by Prentice Hall in 1980, and reissued by the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) in 2000. A more recent book, also co-authored with Enders Robinson, Digital Imaging and Deconvolution was issued by the SEG Press in 2008. Treitel has authored and co-authored more than 80 technical papers. In 1991 and again in 1993 he was a Visiting Professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT. He retired from Amoco in 1993. In 1994 Treitel was awarded the German government’s Alexander von Humboldt Prize, which allowed him to spend a year in Germany as a Visiting Scholar at the University of Karlsruhe. He served as editor of GEOPHYSICS from 1995 to 1997. He is an Honorary Member of the SEG, of the EAGE, and of the Geophysical Societies of Houston and of Tulsa. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, and of the AGU, and a member of AAAS and Sigma Xi. He is the recipient of the SEG Fessenden Medal (1969), of four SEG Best Paper Awards (1964, 1969, 1988, and 1995), of the EAGE's Conrad Schlumberger Award (1969), of the SEG’s Maurice Ewing Medal (1989), of the EAGE’s Erasmus Medal (2007), and of the American Geosciences Institute Marcus Milling Legendary Geoscientist Medal (2012. He has served as Distinguished Lecturer for the SEG (1982) and for the AAPG (1994). In 1997 he formed TriDekon, Inc., a geophysical consulting firm.