Thomas Hess

Thomas Hess serves as a Researcher at the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and the Institute for Geophysics within the Jackson School of Geosciences at The University of Texas at Austin. He functions as the Jackson School's primary knowledge resource for geoscientific software development and application support.

Research Expertise: Hess specializes in advanced seismic imaging techniques including anisotropic migrations, velocity refinement for pre-stack depth migration, and reverse time migration. His work focuses on optimizing multi-processor parallel processes for sub-seismic imaging and velocity model development, directly supporting 2D/3D/4D seismic data interpretation and quality control.

Technical Leadership: He develops and maintains critical geoscience software resources including Openworks, Seisworks, Petrel, Kingdom Suite, and open-source alternatives like OpenDtect. His expertise in seismic geometry and deconvolution enables robust data validation for 3-component OBS data, VSP, and well logs.

Academic Integration: Hess provides essential support to graduate students through software training, data validity testing, and quality assurance protocols, directly contributing to the Jackson School's research infrastructure and educational mission in geophysical sciences.