Grants Support Student Research in Petroleum and Energy-Mineral Resources or Environmental Geology

Second-year geology M.S. student Elizabeth Davis and second-year Ph.D. student Spencer Fuston have been awarded 2020 Grants-In-Aid funding from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) Foundation.

This year, the Grants-In-Aid program awarded $299,000 in research funds to 110 graduate students at 58 different universities around the world. AAPG Foundation Grants-in-Aid are awarded to graduate students whose research pertains to petroleum and energy-mineral resources or environmental geology.

These grants are awarded based on merit and range from $500 to $3,000, covering costs associated with student’s thesis work, such as field work, laboratory analyses, etc.

Elizabeth Davis was awarded the Arthur A. Meyerhoff Memorial Grant to support her research on the effects of tectonics on sediment routing, basin geometry and stratigraphic architecture of the Late Cretaceous Green River Basin. Davis’ research utilizes detrital zircon geochronology, well-log correlation, as well as field work. Her research is supervised by Dr. Julia Wellner.

Spencer Fuston was awarded the Merrill W. Haas Memorial Grant to support his research on the collisional/strike-slip tectonics of Jurassic-Cretaceous western North America. Fuston’s research will involve detailed field-based stratigraphic description and paired detrital zircon provenance/isotopic analysis in the Tyaughton basin of southern British Columbia. Fuston was a member of the 2019 World Champion AAPG Imperial Barrel Award team and serves as an officer with AAPG Wildcatters, the UH AAPG student chapter. His research is supervised by Dr. Jonny Wu.