Typically, students are required to take four courses during the course of their graduate program. The courses in seismology are oftem adapted to the interests of the students. Two courses that have been offered recently have been:
Students are taken through the various practical considerations in the standard processing of a seismic reflection survey, including geometry assignment, deconvolution methods, velocity analysis, NMO, DMO, stack and migration. As part of this course, the student will process a seismic line from raw shots to final migration using the ProMAX software package, and will complete a project on one aspect of the processing, for example deconvolution methods.
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the practical considerations of writing seismic processing software. Some previous experience with a programming language such as FORTRAN or C is usually necessary. The strudent will write both the GUI menu and source code for a module that can be executed as part of the ProMAX processing software package. This requires understanding a basic seismic processing algorithm, and the use of library routines that, for example, manipulate input parameters such as a stacking velocity field.
Graduate students also benefit from the proximity of the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences at UBC where they can take a variety of graduate courses in geophysics:
Linear Inverse Theory (Doug Oldenburg)
Theory and Methods in Seismic Interpretation (Michael Bostock)
Mechanics of Earthquakes and Faulting (Elizabeth Hearn)
Imaging and Estimation with Wavelets (Felix Hermann)