Education matters Next generations of earth scientists IV: Mentoring and inspiring students and early career geophysicists This month we have news of four programmes aimed at mentoring and inspiring ASEG-PESA Members as students, and then early in their careers. Dave Pratt reminds us about past successes in the Frank Arnott Award, and brings news about the next 2020 competition. This is an international competition that challenges students to devise innovative ways to process and interpret potential-field data sets. Daniel Thompson tells us about his personal experience of the Victorian PESA-ASEG mentoring programme and, in particular, about the short course led by Rob Kirk and sponsored by Karoon Energy and 3D Oil Limited. We congratulate one of our Australian faculty members, Professor Boris Gurevich, on being selected by the International Society of Exploration Geophysicists to be an Honorary Lecturer for Australia and the Pacific, teaching on the theme“Seismic attenuation, dispersion and anisotropy in porous rocks”. We include an overview of Boris’ lectures in these pages, illustrating the huge advances from seismic interpretation to rock property analysis that have been achieved in past decades. And, in breaking news, we are able to announce an SEG DISC course coming to Australia in August-September. The Distinguished Instructor is Professor Monika Prasad of the Colorado School of Mines. The opportunities in these lectures for inspiring our students and providing further education for our professional Members are outstanding. The Frank Arnott Award – encouraging students Through its“Innovation in data integration and visualisation” competition, the Frank Arnott Award is focused on motivating the next generation of young geoscientists to become leaders in mineral exploration. Following the success of the first competition, the Award committee wants to encourage our societies, universities, industry and geoscience students to participate in this ongoing programme. The Frank Arnott Award was established to honour Frank Arnott (1951 – 2009), an exceptional exploration leader who championed innovative techniques through multi-disciplinary dataset integration and visualisation across a range of global exploration programmes. The Award focuses on innovation with modern world class datasets, teamwork and collaboration across disciplines. The Award objectives fit well with the ASEG’s aims as set down almost 50 years ago to; • to promote the science of geophysics, and specifically exploration geophysics, throughout Australia, • to foster fellowship and co-operation between geophysicists, • to encourage closer understanding and co-operation with other earth scientists, • to assist in design and teaching of courses in geophysics and to sponsor student sections where appropriate. Undergraduate and post-graduate research students are entitled to participate in the Award and they are encouraged to form their collaborative teams early in the Award cycle. We see an opportunity for universities to integrate the Award processes into their undergraduate and post-graduate programmes, and to take advantage of support from our societies, industry and industry mentors. Participation in the Award provides access to modern and diverse geoscience datasets suited to collaborative exploration projects. The submission dates and preparation process are designed to slot into the long December-February session breaks to ensure that the participants have sufficient time available outside normal university programmes. Past successes for Australian students – the 2017 Award competition Team “On the Rocks” from the University of Adelaide were the winners of the 2017 Apprentice Category. The award ceremony took place at Exploration ‘17 during the Gala Dinner. The team’s project on “Innovation in 3D projections and presentation of geoscientific data” was an excellent example of collaboration across many disciplines. Michael Asten Associate Editor for Education michael.asten@monash.edu The University of Adelaide Team “On the Rocks” accepting their Award cheque from the Award Committee members, Tim Dobush and Theo Aravanis. Education matters 32 PREVIEW JUNE 2019