Caribbean Basins, Tectonics, and Hydrocarbons Project
UH EAS
University of Houston

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Project Researchers

CBTH Staff (4)

CBTH Allied Researchers (8)

CBTH Students at UH (9)

Former CBTH Students & Staff

To contact a student or staff member regarding their research, please e-mail cbthproject@gmail.com.


Paul Mann, PhD



Dr. Paul Mann is the principal investigator of the CBTH Project which he began with Alejandro Escalona at the University of Texas in September of 2005. In June of 2011, Paul and the CBTH project moved from UT Austin to the University of Houston. His main research interest is the tectonics and petroleum geology of sedimentary basins. The CBTH project is providing Paul an opportunity to complete a mega-regional study of the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and Atlantic conjugate margins that he and previous graduate students have previously studied in more localized areas.

Job Title: Professor of Geology, Robert E. Sheriff Endowed Chair
University of Houston
Houston, Texas
pmann@uh.edu

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Jeff Storms


 

 
Jeff Storms is a project consultant employed by the CBTH Project since 2007 to assist with project management, prepare manuscripts for publication in peer-reviewed journals, generate figures and other graphic design work, assist with the yearly atlas release, perform GIS analysis, and to keep the project database up-to-date and organized. Jeff is also the primary administrator of the CBTH website, maintains sponsor contacts, and edits the CBTH newsletter. He received his BS degree in Radio-Televsion-Film from the University of Texas at Austin in May 2009.

Job Title: Project Consultant
University of Houston

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Sharon Cornelius, PhD



Dr. Sharon Cornelius completed her PhD at the University of Houston in December 2017. Her study, which was supervised by Dr. John Castagna on velocity studies of salt in the central Gulf of Mexico, is now published in the journals Interpretation and First Break. For CBTH, she is assisting in our sub-salt data processing and expanding our deepwater and subsalt GOM database.

Job Title: Research Associate 2
University of Houston
Houston, Texas

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José Miguel Gorosabel Araus

 


Dr. José Miguel Gorosabel Araus joined the CBTH Project in March 2023, where he manages the CBTH GIS database and assists in the annual data release to project sponsors. He also supervises the training of CBTH support staff in ArcGIS. His research interests include seismic hazards on Hispaniola.

Job Title: Research Associate 1
University of Houston
Houston, Texas

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Philip J. Ball



Philip J. Ball is the Chief of Geothermal Innovation at CATF and Senior Honorary Researcher at the Department of Geography, Geology and the Environment, Keele University. Philip has gained international experience working with NOC’s, INOC’s, IOC’s and he also has experience working in established and start-up companies. Philip studied Geology and History at Keele University, UK, between 1994-1998, and in 1998 he obtained dual honours (B.Sc.) degree. Philip was awarded an MS degree in Basin Evolution and Dynamics in 2000, and a PhD in Earth Sciences in 2005 from Royal Holloway University, UK. In 2020, Philip completed his MBA with distinction from the London School of Business and Finance, UK, with specializations in carbon management, entrepreneurship and innovation. Philip is the owner of Geothermal Energy Advisors (GEA). Phillip is collaborating as a thesis committee member for CBTH studies in Guyana and the Red Sea.

Job Title: Adjunct Professor
University of Houston
Houston, Texas

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Jean-Claude Hippolyte



Dr. Jean-Claude Hippolyte is currently a research geologist at CEREGE in Aix-en-Province, France, and is currently collaborating with Paul Mann and Hamza Akka on the structure of northern Morocco and the Strait of Gibraltar and on Caribbean studies in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Trinidad.

Job Title: Geologist
CEREGE
Aix-en-Provence, France

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Jose-Luis Granja Bruña



Dr. Jose-Luis Granja Bruña is currently a professor in geodynamics and applied tectonics at Universidad Complutense of Madrid. He was the host of Paul Mann during his Senior Fulbright Fellowship at Universidad Complutense from September 2022 to January 2023. He is collaborating with CBTH on research by Jose Gorosabel and Paul Mann on Cenozoic tectonics of the Beata Ridge and southern margin of Hispaniola.

Job Title: Professor
Universidad Complutense of Madrid
Madrid, Spain

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Jean-Marie Laigle



Jean-Marie Laigle is the Founder of Xplorlab and creator of the ExCaliber software used for petroleum system analysis and modeling. He is working closely with CBTH researchers to apply ExCaliber to define model inputs to produce validated and highly-predictive, regional-scale basin models of active areas of exploration including: Guyana, Campos-Santos basins, Pelotas basin, basins along the northwestern margin of Africa, and the Delaware basin of west Texas.

Job Title: Founder
Xplorlab
Denver, Colorado

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Ian Norton, PhD



Dr. Ian Norton is an allied research with the CBTH Project working on plate reconstruction models using PaleoGIS software. Dr. Norton works at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics, where he is a lead researcher on the PLATES Project. His research is focused on understanding the structural evolution of continental margins, particularly trying to reconcile deformation amounts that can be predicted from regional-scale plate reconstructions with deformation that can be inferred from local-scale structural data.

Job Title: Allied Researcher / Senior Research Fellow
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas
norton*@ig.utexas.edu

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Andrew Pepper



Andrew Pepper is the Managing Director of This is Petroleum Systems, LLC and is currently an Adjunct Professor at the University of Houston. He is working with CBTH as a technical advisor on a variety of basin modeling studies.

Job Title: Adjunct Professor
University of Houston
Houston, Texas

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Jonathan Rotzien



Jonathan Rotzien is the President of Basin Dynamics, LLC and is workingwith CBTH as an advisor on student projects. He is a siliciclastic specialist who utilizes E&P data for deepwater exploration. He was the lead editor of a comprehensive volume on deepwater exploration that included two chapters by Paul Mann and CBTH PhD graduate Md Nahidul Hasan (now at BP).

Job Title: Adjunct Professor
University of Houston
Houston, Texas

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Jumoke Akinpelu




Jumoke Akinpelu is a Petroleum Geologist with a MSc Petroleum Geoscience from University of Manchester, UK. She joined the CBTH Project in Fall 2023 and began her PhD study focusing on petroleum systems evaluation and basin modelling of the Equatorial Atlantic West African Margin. She has industry work experience in petroleum exploration, development and production of multiple shallow and deepwater fields in clastic environments.

PhD graduate research assistant
University of Houston
Houston, Texas

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Ruth Beltran




Ruth is a current employee of Ecopetrol in Bogota, Colombia who began a PhD study in fall 2022 with the CBTH Project focusing on Ecopetrol’s production area in the Campos-Santos region of Brazil. Her research is supported by Ecopetrol.

PhD graduate research assistant
University of Houston
Houston, Texas

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Daniel Maya




Daniel Maya is an Ecuadorian petroleum geologist and Vice President of AAPG Wildcatters at the University of Houston. He obtained his BS degree in geology from the National Polytechnic School of Ecuador. He started his Ph.D. in the fall of 2023; Daniel is developing a project on Tectonostratigraphy, crustal architecture, and Basin modeling of the Uruguayan and Argentinean margins as part of the CBTH Project.

PhD graduate research assistant
University of Houston
Houston, Texas

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Josh Miller




Josh Miller is a native Texan who completed his BS in geology at the University of Texas in May of 2023, and joined the CBTH as a MSc student in January of 2024. Josh worked on a project defining the Bering Sea crust and arc framework in the spring of 2024. He is now moving on to a study to define the structural and stratigraphic framework of the Uruguayan margin, and basin modeling of the Pelotas Basin.

MSc graduate research assistant
University of Houston
Houston, Texas

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Chesney Petkovsek




Chesney Petkovsek joined the CBTH project as a PhD student in January 2020. She completed her MS in Engineering Science with emphasis in geology and BS in Geology at the University of Mississippi. Her PhD project involves seismic interpretation, heat flow analysis, and sequence stratigraphy to better understand the hydrocarbon potential of the Delaware basin, West Texas.

PhD graduate research assistant
University of Houston
Houston, Texas

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Peter Savrides




Peter Savrides is an MSc student who joined the CBTH Project in August 2024. He is a native New Yorker who graduated from SUNY Binghamton in May 2024 with a BS in geology and a minor in Russian language. Peter will be studying the passive margin of Eastern Canada and offshore basin modeling near Newfoundland and Labrador.

MS graduate research assistant
University of Houston
Houston, Texas

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Upal Shahriar




Upal is an honors BS and MS student from Dhaka, Bangladesh who will begin a PhD study in fall 2022 with the CBTH Project focusing on Mauritania and the Moroccan offshore margin. This project will complete the regional CBTH mapping and basin modeling study that transverses the northwestern African margin from Morocco to the Guinea Plateau and builds on completed and ongoing work on the rifted-passive margin of northwestern Africa by Marcus Zinecker (PhD, 2020, now with BP Houston), Tarek Galhom (MS, 2020, now with Apache, Egypt) and Nahid Hasan (PhD, in progress).

PhD graduate research assistant
University of Houston
Houston, Texas

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Kenneth Shipper




Kenneth Shipper worked with the CBTH Project as an undergrad research assistant from January 2021 to December 2021 where he has worked on gravity modeling of the Guyana margin and flexural effects related to the eastern subduction margin of the Caribbean plate. He graduated from UH in May 2021 with a BS degree in geophysics with minors in geology and math. He began his PhD study at UH in January 2022 where he continues his work on the Guyana margin and flexural effects of the Caribbean plate.

PhD graduate research assistant
University of Houston
Houston, Texas

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Estefani Ruiz Toro




Estefani Ruiz Toro graduated in May 2024 from the University of Houston-Downtown with a BS degree in geosciences with a concentration in petroleum geotechnology. In the summer of 2024, she worked for the CBTH project as researcher and for NASA as a summer intern. She is currently a first-year, MS student with the CBTH project researching the tectonic history, potential fields, seismic stratigraphy, and hydrocarbon potential of the Bering Sea and its margins in western Alaska and northeastern Russia.

MS graduate research assistant
University of Houston
Houston, Texas

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