Mark Zoback

Dr. Mark D. Zoback is the Benjamin M. Page Professor of Geophysics, Emeritus at Stanford University, where he was also the Director of the Stanford Natural Gas Initiative and Co-Director of the Stanford Center for Induced and Triggered Seismicity and the Stanford Center for Carbon Storage and a Senior Fellow in the Precourt Institute for Energy. Dr. Zoback conducts research on in situ stress, fault mechanics, and reservoir geomechanics with an emphasis on shale gas, tight gas and tight oil production as well as CO2 sequestration. Dr. Zoback served on the Secretary of Energy Subcommittee on shale gas development and the National Academy of Engineering Committee that investigated the Deepwater Horizon accident. He is the author of two textbooks and the author/co-author of approximately 400 technical papers. His most recent book, Unconventional Reservoir Geomechanics, was written with Arjun Kohli, and published in 2019 by Cambridge University Press. His online course, Reservoir Geomechanics, has been completed by over 12,000 people around the world. Dr. Zoback has received a number of awards and honors including election to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 2011, he was awarded an Einstein Chair Professorship of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2013 and received the Robert R. Berg Outstanding Research Award of the AAPG in 2015. He was the 2020 chair of the Society of Petroleum Engineers Technical Committee on Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage and 2021 Honorary Lecturer for the Society of Exploration Geophysicists. In 2023, he was selected as a Hagler Distinguished Lecturer at Texas A&M University and awarded the Rolf Emmermann medal of the German Research Centre for Geosciences.