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Dr. Jon R. Rotzien, 2018 Distinguished Service Award

Jon RotzienThe Gulf Coast Section SEPM Distinguished Service Award for 2018 is given to Dr. Jon R. Rotzien, President of Basin Dynamics, LLC in Houston, Texas.

Jon answered a call for help in organizing the technical program for the 2017 Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies/GCSSEPM Annual Conference, which took place in San Antonio. Despite petroleum geoscience being mired in a deep industry downturn/depression, and with many of the logical contributors to the conference greatly affected by the unprecedented impacts of Hurricane Harvey, Jon's tireless efforts led to an extremely successful 2-day symposium on deep-water depositional systems and their petroleum reservoirs. This symposium comprised more than 40% of the technical program of the entire conference and Jon's contribution was probably the single biggest impact on the conference's technical success.

A little on Jon's background: Jon’s expertise is the sedimentology and stratigraphy of deep-water depositional systems, source-to-sink sediment transfer, and basin analysis. Jon consults for the global energy industry and serves as an instructor for deep-water reservoir training seminars and field courses in North America and Europe with upcoming courses in South America, Asia, and New Zealand. Prior to Basin Dynamics, he was an exploration and appraisal geoscientist at BP. He received his Ph.D. in geological and environmental sciences from Stanford University and a B.A. in geology from Colorado College. He has published peer-reviewed research papers and scientific conference proceedings pertaining to petroleum reservoir quality, reservoir characterization, sequence stratigraphy, basin analysis, and geophysics. In his spare time, he supports the Boy Scouts of America and serves as Associate Editor for the Bulletin of Canadian Petroleum Geology.

Jon R. Rotzien is a most worthy recipient of the Gulf Coast Section SEPM Distinguished Service Award for 2018. On behalf of the Executive Council and our entire membership I would like to say, "Thank you and congratulations."

John Suter