Research Associate Professor Cornel Olariu Wins Rare Mid-Career Award
February 14, 2024
In the 19 years Cornel Olariu has spent as a geosciences researcher at The University of Texas at Austin, he has written 85 peer-reviewed papers published around the globe, received $6 million in funding as a principal investigator or co-PI for research projects, and has supervised 23 masters and doctoral students through to their graduation. Olariu is known in particular for his field work, which provides new insights on how surface rivers, waves, and tides shape marine and lake deltas.
For his many innovative contributions to the field of sedimentology, the Society for Sedimentary Geology awarded Olariu the William R. Dickinson Medal in 2023. While most awards tend to be bestowed at the culmination of a researcher’s long career, this is an award given to recognize excellent mid-career scientists on the path to great discoveries.
And yet, Olariu insists that he hasn’t done anything special to deserve this recognition.
“It’s a lot of students’ work that’s gone into it. Good students, you tell them something but they push back or they come with even better ideas,” he said.
Former Department Chair Ron Steel worked closely with Olariu for years at the Jackson School of Geosciences, and wrote the announcement that came with his award.
“Over his career so far, Cornel Olariu and his students have made very significant advances into new emergent themes in sedimentology and basin analysis,” Steel wrote. “Cornel’s work illustrates well that careful outcrop documentation (extended greatly with drone-collected data) and extended even further with the use of subsurface datasets lead to influential innovative results in sedimentology and basin analysis.”
Olariu made a name for himself with his research on Utah’s Book Cliffs, a popular destination for geology student trips and industry geoscientists to explore. These groups often refer to his papers in their studies of the outcrops.
Olariu came to The University of Texas at Austin in 2005 as a post-doctoral scholar. He worked to become a research scientist, and then at the end of 2023 was named a research associate professor at the Jackson School’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.