Distinguished Lectures

The Jackson School’s distinguished lectureships are made possible by support from our friends and alumni. Read more about the lectureships and their benefactors below.

All lectures are part of the DeFord seminar series.

Past Lectureships

The Don R. and Patricia Kidd Boyd Lectureship in Petroleum Exploration

• Vitor Abreu, Consultant and Adjunct Professor of Earth Science at Rice University
• Mike Blum, University of Kansas
• Bruce Fouke, University of Illinois
• Elowyn Yager, University of Idaho

Clara Jones Langston Centennial Lectureship in Vertebrate Paleontology

• Isaiah Bolden, Georgia Tech
• Matthew Collins, University of York, UK
• Katya Ekaterina, Jackson School of Geosciences
• Daniel Fisher, University of Michigan
• John Hutchinson, Royal Veterinary College, London
• Tim Lyons, University of California, Riverside
• Stephanie Pierce, Harvard University
• P. David Polly, Indiana University Bloomington
• Hans-Dieter Sues, National Museum of Natural History
• Dustin Trail, University of Rochester

Virgil E. and Mildred L. Barnes Distinguished Lecture Series in Geology

• Veronika Bray, University of Arizona
• Barbara Carrapa, University of Arizona
• Julie Castillo-Rogez,  Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• Amy East, U.S. Geological Society
• Ken Farley, Caltech
• Brad Foley, University of Pennsylvania
• David Goldsby, University of Pennsylvania
• Jessica Guo, University of Arizona
• Astrid Holzheid, Universität Kiel
• Matt Jackson, University of California Santa Barbara
• Kathryn Stack Morgan, NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• Mark Richards, University of California Berkeley
• Edwin Schauble, Earth and Space Sciences – UCLA
• Peter Schultz, Brown University
• Ken Williams, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
• An Yin, University of California Los Angeles
• Laure Zanna, New York University

Judd H. and Cynthia S. Oualline Centennial Lectureship in Geological Sciences

• Jonathan Ajo-Franklin, Rice University
• Roland Burgmann, UC Berkeley
• Rufus Catchings, U.S. Geological Society
• Sebnem Duzgun, Colorado School of Mines
• Doug Edmonds, Indiana University Bloomington
• Bethany Ehlmann, CalTech
• David Gochis, National Center for Atmospheric Research
• Michael Grammer, Oklahoma State University
• Jean Hsieh, Talisman Energy (Canada)
• Heiner Igel, Munich University, Germany
• Steve Jacobsen, Northwestern University
• Randy Koster, NASA
• Kate Maher, Stanford University
• Wendy Mao, Stanford University
• Sonia Seneviratne, ETH Zurich
• Stuart Simmons, University of Utah
• Chris Walker, British Petroleum
• A. Joshua West, University of Southern California
• Rachel Wood, University of Edinburgh (UK)
• Dawn Wright, ESRI

Judd H. and Cynthia S. Oualline Centennial Lectureship in Petroleum Geology

• Hendratta Ali, Fort Hays State University
• Peter Cobbold, Universite de Rennes 1, France
• Jessica (JC) Creveling, Oregon State University
• Liviu Matenco, Universiteit Utrecht

Edwin Allday Lectureship in Geological Sciences

• Ariel Anbar, Arizona State University
• Michael Bostock, University of British Columbia
• Peter Clift, Lousiana State University
• Nicolas Dauphas, University of Chicago
• Giulio Di Toro, University of Manchester, UK
• Andy Gleadow, University of Melbourne
• Marcelo Leppe, Chilean Antarctic Institute (INACH)
• Jie (Jackie) Li, University of Michigan
• Maureen Long, Yale University
• Andre Revil, Colorado School of Mines
• Brian Romans, Virginia Tech
• Frederik Simons, Princeton University
• Bob Stern, University of Texas Dallas
• James Kinter, Institute of Global Environment and Society Inc.
• Jeroen Tromp, Princeton University
• Michael Walter, Carnegie Institution of Washington
• Fiona Whitaker, University of Bristol (UK)

Robert H. Cuyler Endowed Lecture Series

• Kenneth Belitz, U.S. Geological Survey
• Kristin Bergmann, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
• Tim Bralower, Penn State
• Thomas Carr, Carthage College
• Tim Dixon, University of South Florida
• Dennis Hartmann, University of Washington
• Kate Huntington, University of Washington
• Jean Hutchinson, Queen’s University, Canada
• Kathleen Johnson, University of California Irvine
• Peter Kelemen, Lamont-Doherty
• David Kohlstedt, University of Minnesota
• Gary Mavko, Stanford University
• Christie Rowe, McGill University, Canada
• Alicia Wilson, University of South Carolina
• Lisa White, University of California Museum of Paleontology
• Stephen Wofsy, Harvard University
• Mirko van der Baan, University of Alberta (Canada)
• Renyi Zhang, Texas A&M University

The Fred L. and Frances J. Oliver Lectureship in Texas Hydrology and Water Resources

• Stefan Bacchu, Alberta Geological Survey, Edmonton, Alberta
• William Back, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia
• Andy Baker, The University of New South Wales (Australia)
• Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, University of California Merced
• Brian Berkowitz, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
• Gabriel Bowen, University of Utah
• Ken Bradbury, Wisconsin Geological Survey, Madison, Wisconsin
• Stan Davis, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona
• Robert Dickinson, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona
• Tim Drever, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming
• Bill Fetter, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, Oshkosh, Wisconsin
• Tom Gleeson, McGill University
• Amy Hardberger, St. Mary’s University
• Charles Harvey, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
• Tony Jakeman, Australian National University
• Gaby Katul, Duke University
• Wolfgang Kinzelbach, ETH Zurich
• Alexander Klimchouk, Ukrainian Karst Institute, Kiev, Ukraine
• Rosemary Knight, Stanford University
• Stefan Kollet, Bonn University, Bonn, Germany
• Laurel Larsen, University of California Berkeley
• Fred Leaney, CSIRO, Adelaide, Australia
• Peter Lichtner, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Santa Fe, New Mexico
• John Mather, Royal Holloway College, University of London, Surrey, United Kingdom
• Jennifer McIntosh, University of Arizona
• Hrvoje Measki, University of Zagreb, Croatia
• Larry McKay, University of Tennessee, Knoxville Tennessee
• Holly Michael, University of Delaware
• Allen Moench, U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, California
• Chris Neuzil, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia
• Art Palmer, SUNY-Oneonta, Oneonta, New York
• Frank Schwartz, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
• Don Siegel, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York
• Craig Simmons, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia
• Marios Sophocleous, Kansas Geological Survey, Lawrence, Kansas
• Cliff Voss, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia
• Chunmiao Zheng, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama

The Edwin Allday Lectureship was established in 1982 from the estate of Edwin Allday to support visiting lecturers in geological sciences. Born in 1929, Edwin Allday was an independent oil and gas operator in Houston, Texas. He also had cattle and ranching operations in Red River and Houston Counties, Texas. Allday attended the University of Texas, receiving a BS in geology in 1951 and his Masters in geology in 1953.  The Fondren Foundation established the Edwin Allday Centennial Chair in Subsurface Geology to allow for the recruitment of a person with special expertise in the field of subsurface geology.

The Virgil E. and Mildred L. Barnes Distinguished Lecture Series in Geology was established in 1998, by the children of Virgil and Mildred Barnes. Preference is given to lecturers in the areas that Virgil was especially passionate about:  tektites, meteorites and impact phenomena; geological mapping; Precambrian stratigraphy; economic geology; gravity and magnetics; earth temperatures; Paleozoic stratigraphy; and petrology.  Virgil Barnes was a Professor Emeritus of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, a senior research scientist at the Bureau of Economic Geology and a world renowned scientist.   Dr. Barnes was inducted into the Jackson School’s Hall of Distinction in 2008.

The Don R. and Patricia Kidd Boyd Lectureship in Petroleum Exploration was established by Mr. and Mrs. Don R. Boyd in 1985 to give a series of lectures on various and timely aspects of petroleum exploration that would be interesting and beneficial to young geologists.  Remembering what he learned from attending lectures while a geology student at UT Austin, Mr. Boyd wanted to bring geologists of national stature to speak at the Jackson School with the hope that students would find what was said to be memorable and motivating.  On April 24, 2003, the main auditorium and lecture hall in the Jackson Geological Sciences Building on the campus of UT Austin was named the Don R. Boyd Auditorium in honor of Mr. Boyd’s many contributions to the Jackson School.

The Robert H. Cuyler Endowed Lecture Series was established in 2008 with a gift from the estate of Benjamin Monroe Anderson. Ben wanted to honor the life of his friend and mentor, Captain Robert Hamilton Cuyler. Cuyler was born in Austin, Texas in 1908 and was Associate Professor of Geology at the University of Texas at Austin for 17 years. His untimely death, while serving his country on a training mission with the Army Air Corps in 1944, was a staggering blow not only to his friends and family, but to the science of geology, specifically micropaleontology and subsurface geology. Ben Anderson earned a degree in geology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1939 where he was a member of Sigma Chi Fraternity. He also spent a year studying aeronautical engineering at the Curtiss-Wright Aeronautical Institute in California. In 1945 he co-founded Anderson-Greenwood and Company to design and build aircraft, which became a world leader in precision valve technology. Ben Anderson died in 2007, at the age of 91.

Clara Jones Langston Centennial Lectureship in Vertebrate Paleontology was established in 1983 by an anonymous donor in honor of Ms. Clara Jones Langston.

The Fred L. and Frances J. Oliver Lectureship in Texas Hydrology and Water Resources was created in 1985. Fred and Frances Oliver created this lectureship because they believe the study of water resources in Texas is as important as the development and exploration of oil and gas. They established the lectureship with the goal of providing better education concerning water problems being faced by Texas and solutions to those problems. Fred received his B.S. in geology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1951. He is a current member of the Geology Foundation Advisory Council. Fred resides in Dallas, Texas where he is the president of PVT, Inc.  In 2009, Fred’s family established the Fred and Frances Oliver Endowed Scholarship in their honor to recruit graduate students in the field of hydrogeology.

The Judd H. and Cynthia S. Oualline Centennial Lectureship in Petroleum Geology and The Judd H. and Cynthia S. Oualline Centennial Lectureship in Geological Sciences were established in 1983. The funds exist to bring exceptional and distinguished lecturers to the Jackson School for the benefit of the geosciences community at UT. The endowments honor Mr. Judd H. Oualline of Houston, Texas, a 1942 geology graduate of The University of Texas at Austin and former vice president and general manager of Getty Oil Company’s Southern Exploration and Production Division. He was a director and executive Committee member of the Oklahoma Petroleum Council and a member of both the Western Oil and Gas Association and the Illinois Oil and Gas Association.  The petroleum geology lectureship, the first endowed lectureship in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and the subsequent geological sciences lectureship were established to meet the then-critical need for funding of outside speakers. Mr. Oualline was instrumental in securing the Getty Oil Company Chair, the first company sponsored chair within the Geology Foundation, which is currently held by Dr. Mark Cloos within the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.