Meet a New Kind of Expert: The Data Geoscientist

From traditional geology to Viridien Data Hub — Operations manager Meghan Davies reflects on her unexpected career journey and the joys  of working with a team of scientists at the forefront of digital transformation.

“I started out as a traditional geologist. If you had told me back then that I would be working with developers and machine learning engineers instead of working in a lab or out in the field, I would have laughed,” says Meghan Davies, operations manager at Viridien Data Hub. The team’s digital transformation solutions and services help geoscientists rapidly access all their data to overcome subsurface challenges and reduce cycle time. 

“I enjoy my role as a leader and manager, and as it turns out, there is a subset of geoscientists uniquely qualified for this kind of work.” 

Hailing from the UK, Meghan joined Viridien nine years ago as a graduate geoscientist focusing on frontier exploration before eventually becoming a key contributor to the development of Viridien’s Data Hub. Today, in her leadership role, she manages a multi-disciplinary team of scientists and developers. 

Many of these experts go by a job title new to the world of geology: data geoscientist. Viridien coined this job description for geoscientists who love immersing themselves in data and AI coding — specifically using Python programming. 

“It’s a unique job. As far as I know, we are the only ones out there who recruit and train for the kind of cross-disciplinary work our data geoscientists do. And it’s not just our data geoscientists who make the Data Hub a success. Our data, machine learning and software engineers add their unique perspectives to what we do. We can effectively solve digital transformation challenges for our clients in the energy industry by bringing together our subject-matter experts and developers. 

Our data geoscientists have unique skills that allow them to support both data science and geoscience. One of our unique selling points is that these experts work alongside our developers, solving challenges side by side. This teamwork approach allows our data geoscientists to interpret the data while developers work to make processes easy, repeatable and efficient,” she says. 

Meghan is a dedicated geoscience and technology professional, but in her free time she loves to exercise! She plays goal attack for Viridien’s North Wales Netball team and practices yoga.

The power of  digital transformation

Harnessing the power of machine learning (ML), Viridien Data Hub transforms unstructured legacy geoscience data into analytics-ready digital data — displayed with user-friendly visual interfaces to drastically reduce client time spent on research, analysis and data preparation. This ML can process information in a fraction of the time it would take a human to get through even one report. Because this new technology frees up so much time, client experts can focus their attention on interpreting and validating answers produced in response to queries. The increasing volume of data Viridien Data Hub processes also improves the accuracy of its reports. Every new report added to the mixture provides more context for understanding the geological makeup of our planet. 

“According to research, teams spend between 30 and 70% of project time gathering and preparing research materials before starting on the principal work. We want to help our clients save time and money while improving accuracy,” says Davies. 

To leverage so many records, Viridien Data Hub runs on a constantly expanding taxonomical system. The system harmonizes the myriad terms used in geology. The taxonomy is essentially a distillation of expert knowledge. 

“Just one concept could have a dozen different names across hundreds of documents. We are always categorizing new words as they pop up and aligning them with our existing taxonomy. That way, the reports we deliver to our clients use consistent terminology that is easier to interpret,” shares Davies. 

A diverse team of problem-solving data geoscientists 

“My team members come from many backgrounds, and they show up so excited to tackle new questions and solve new problems each morning. We all work well together, and it’s a very positive and supportive environment,” shares Davies. 

There are 70 people on the team, ranging from SMEs with years of experience under their belt to relatively new scientists. 

“Even though Viridien has been around a long time, our team still has a kind of ‘start-up’ feel. Everything is fresh and exciting. There is lots of innovation going on,” adds Davies. And with a team of such diverse experts dedicated to pushing the boundaries of ML, digitization, and visualization technologies, the future of geoscience is brighter than ever. 

Watch Meg’s SPE talk ‘team, technology and taxonomy: tools for digital transformation’ here
Listen to Meg discuss data and geology career pathways with Data Hub graduates here
Find out more about our expert data transformation services here