Research Projects

Ilya Tsvankin

University Distinguished Professor
Department of Geophysics
Co-Leader, Center for Wave Phenomena

The main focus of my research group, the A(nisotropy)-Team, is on modeling, inversion, and imaging of seismic reflection and borehole data from anisotropic media. The current A-Team research portfolio emphasizes full-waveform inversion (FWI) for elastic anisotropic models, time-lapse monitoring of CO2 sequestration, and novel applications of machine-learning (ML) techniques in seismology. In addition to CWP sponsors, the team collaborates with the Reservoir Characterization Project (RCP) at Mines, several academic groups in the US and abroad, and the Los Alamos and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories.

Among my current and recently completed research projects are:

  • Time-lapse elastic full-waveform inversion (FWI) for transversely isotropic media with a vertical (VTI) and tilted (TTI) symmetry axis (with Y. Liu).
  • Seismic monitoring of CO2 sequestration using acoustic time-lapse FWI of seismic data combined with neural networks (with Y. Liu and colleagues from the Los Alamos and Lawrence Berkeley National Labs).
  • High-resolution seismic reservoir monitoring using multitask and transfer machine learning (with A. Ahmed and Y. Liu).
  • Elastic FWI for tilted orthorhombic models with lithologic constraints incorporated using machine learning (with A. Kumar).
  • Seismic wave propagation and wavefield decomposition for anisotropic attenuative media [with Q. Hao (Jilin University)].
  • Facies-constrained elastic FWI for VTI and orthorhombic media [with S. Singh and E. Zabihi Naeini (Earth Science Analytics)].
  • Supervised and semisupervised machine-learning algorithms for building 3D facies models using borehole data and for predicting facies distribution from migrated seismic sections [with S. Singh and E. Zabihi Naeini (Earth Science Analytics)].
  • Sensitivity analysis of 3D elastic FWI for orthorhombic media with a horizontal symmetry plane (with S. Singh).
  • Mimetic algorithms for anisotropic coupled-domain finite-difference (FD) modeling (with H. Sethi and J. Shragge).
  • Application of mimetic FD propagators to FWI of multicomponent ocean-bottom seismic data (with H. Sethi and J. Shragge).
  • 3D anisotropic FWI of seismic data for estimating reservoir attributes [with S. Singh, T. Alkhalifah (KAUST), E. Zabihi Naeini (Earth Science Analytics), and J. Cheng (Tongji University)].
  • Microseismic event location and velocity analysis for VTI and orthorhombic models by FWI of downhole data (with O. Jarillo Michel).
  • Wave-equation migration velocity analysis for VTI and TTI media [with V. Li, A. Guitton (Total), and T. Alkhalifah (KAUST)].
  • Source-independent waveform inversion for VTI attenuation parameters (with T. Bai).