In addition to recognizing an individual's contributions to the science or application of geophysics, this position is an active effort to promote geophysics, stimulate general scientific and professional interest, expand technical horizons, and provide a connection to SEG activities and practices.

During his term as an SEG Distinguished Lecturer, Herrmann will travel around the world to speak about the use of compressive sensing in exploration seismology. More specifically, he will speak about how techniques from compressive sensing can be used to look for new and innovative ways to collect time-lapse seismic data at reduced costs and reduced environmental impact. Herrmann will demonstrate that compressive seismic data acquisition removes the need to acquire expensive densely sampled and replicated field surveys, which can lead to an order of magnitude improvement in acquisition efficiency.

Herrmann joined the Georgia Tech faculty in 2017 as a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and as a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Energy. He holds joint appointments in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the School of Computational Science and Engineering.