Posted on November 12, 2024 by College of Sciences
#CollegeNews
Donation of industry leading software continues to enhance geology research for UTSA students
By Ryan Schoensee
The UTSA Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences has received a software license renewal valued at $2.7 million from PE Limited, a Scottish firm that specializes in producing advance software tools that are instrumental to the fields of petroleum engineering and structural geology.
With this in-kind contribution from PE Limited, the department will continue to advance student success and add to the university's distinction as a leading research institution; providing high-caliber resources that can be used to advance its discovery enterprise.
The software, named MOVE, will give students and geologists the ability to study the geometry of rock deposits by producing dynamic subsurface models that can be used to accurately detect underground fluids such as groundwater, oil and gas.
MOVE has many applications in the oil and gas industry. In recent years and thanks to an initiative led by Alex Godet, associate professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, UTSA faculty members and students from the department have leveraged the software to explore structural geological characteristics.
UTSA geology students are encouraged to develop innovative research projects for remote sensing and natural resources. These skills, paired with the experience students receive from using MOVE, make them more competitive job candidates in industries related to structural geology.
Matt Cannon, an assistant professor of instruction in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, teaches UTSA undergraduate and graduate students who will benefit from using MOVE in their research and studies. Cannon leads geology field camps with geology students who collect field data to make geologic maps and cross-sections, which show how geologic features are layered on a vertical plane
"MOVE from PE Limited is the industry leader in structural analysis of tectonic deformation," said Cannon. "Our geology field camp students will use it to restore the geologic cross-sections they generate from field data they collect. This allows them to determine the viability of their mapping and cross-section construction."
MOVE provides visualization and modeling techniques to determine rock stress directions associated with the development of faults. It also includes a complete structural modeling and analysis toolkit with features to help geologists better reduce risk in their structural models. UTSA's license will last until December 2025.
"We are delighted to receive this tremendous support from PE Limited and thank them for their generous gift to our students," said Saugata Datta, chair of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. "Their MOVE software offers our students experiential learning opportunities by guiding them understand the viability of mapping in field camps, field investigation and structural geology courses in this department. With MOVE, our graduate students have gained real-world experience and have been able to model the recharge rate of the groundwater aquifers such as Edwards Aquifer by mapping faults in the subsurface from the UTSA Main Campus."
Datta adds that this software will continue to be leveraged by the next generation of students in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.
— College of Sciences
