Kerans wins the Berg Award

December 5, 2022

Professor Charles Kerans the 2022 Robert R. Berg Outstanding Research Award from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG). The award recognizes a singular achievement in petroleum geoscience research.

Kerans holds the Robert K. Goldhammer Chair of Carbonate Geology in the Department of Geological Sciences and is a senior research scientist at the Bureau of Economic Geology. He is the fourth Jackson School scientist and first faculty member to receive the award since it was first awarded in 2008.

“At this point in my career, this broad recognition for the work I, my amazing students and my colleagues at the Department of Geological Sciences and the Bureau of Economic Geology have done is important and reflects well on the substantial resources and opportunities provided by the Jackson School,” said Kerans. “It is also especially nice to have colleagues who are willing to support and nominate me as well as to have an organization like AAPG — where I have had a long association over my career — bestow the award.”

Kerans established a research program at the bureau in 1985 after receiving a doctorate from Carleton University in Ottawa and completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Western Australian Institute of Technology. In 2006, he was named the Robert Goldhammer Chair of Carbonate Geology in the Department of Geological Sciences. He continues to be active in the Reservoir Characterization Research Lab (RCRL) consortium at the bureau that he helped to establish in 1987. It is now one of the longest-running, industry- sponsored consortiums studying carbonate reservoir systems.

Kerans’ expertise is in characterizing carbonate stratigraphic successions across the geologic record. Kerans and the RCRL have pushed several new approaches to 3D visualization of outcrops as a way of better understanding complex subsurface carbonate reservoirs where nearly half of the world’s remaining petroleum resource is situated. Throughout his career, Kerans has had a focus on field work that is unique: He has conducted research on major oil fields and outcrop analogs across the globe and has led countless field trips for both academic and industry groups to help others see the amazing geologic record of these marine systems.

“Charlie has compiled a remarkable record of exceptional research marked by a score of best paper awards from SEPM, AAPG and other professional organizations,” said William L. Fisher, professor and Leonidas T. Barrow Centennial Chair Emeritus in Mineral Resources in the Department of Geological Sciences. “And now come the major medals in his field—first the Society for Sedimentary Geology’s Francis J. Pettijohn Award in 2015, now the AAPG Berg and many more to follow — for this consummate scholar of carbonate rocks.”