BP funds energy scholarships

BP, one of the world's largest energy companies, has announced a $135,000 contribution to the University of Oklahoma's K20 Center to support a program aimed at encouraging new students to pursue energy-related degrees.

The K20 Scholars program offers high school graduates entering OU from the K20 Center's school network scholarships to help them pursue degrees in science, technology, engineering and math. The program provides four-year scholarships and a one-time award for a laptop computer. In addition, K20 Scholars receive money to design and implement a service-learning project in the student's local community.

BP's contribution establishes energy scholarships for 20 students pursuing energy-related degrees.

For more information about the K20 Scholars program go to http://k20network.ou.edu/university/students/k20-scholars.

Schlumberger donates software to OU college

The University of Oklahoma Mewbourne College of Earth and Energy received more than $8 million in leading-edge software and hardware from Schlumberger, a provider of oil field services and technology to the international petroleum industry.

Schlumberger made the donation as part of an effort to increase industry-standard geology and geophysics software knowledge for students. This preparation will broaden the skill sets of university geology, geophysics and petroleum engineering graduates, making them more attractive in the job market.

Because of the gift, Earth and Energy students now will have access to Petrel seismic-to-simulation software and Interactive Petrophyics software application for reservoir property analysis and summation.

The hardware donation includes 22 Hewlett-Packard workstations and 44 monitors valued at $77,000.

Professor publishes two books

May Yuan, associate dean for the College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences at the University of Oklahoma, recently published two books, titled "Computation and Visualization for Understanding Dynamics in Geographic Domains: A Research Agenda" and "Understanding Dynamics of Geographic Domains."

The books, partially sponsored by U.S. intelligence communities, represent collaboration between Yuan and Kathleen Stewart Hornsby, assistant professor of geography at the University of Iowa. They focus on the area of geographic dynamics, specifically on the analysis of spatial-temporal phenomena, which include movement of people in space and time and development of transportation networks.

Both works are compilations of key ideas and issues discussed during a computation workshop hosted by the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science, which serves as a unified voice for the GIS research community. While the U.S. intelligence communities sponsored the workshop and publications of the books, the contents of both books are broadly based in computational and visualization theories and methods.