Dr Wayne Pennington presented this alternative design for the proposed Dry Wash Reservoir at the Ivins City Talk About Water on February 22, 2024.

A geophysicist, Pennington’s research is centered on the response of Earth materials to changes in physical conditions, such as stress, saturation, and temperature. The applications of this work are found in induced seismicity, deep earthquakes, as well as oil and gas exploration and development.

He has worked in both academia and in industry and has conducted fieldwork at sites around the world. In the 1970s, he studied tectonic earthquakes in Latin America and Pakistan. In the 1980s, at the University of Texas at Austin, he studied the relationship of earthquakes to oil and gas production. Following that, he worked at the research laboratory for Marathon Oil Company, studying techniques to improve the identification of, and production from, oil and gas reservoirs.

Since 1994, he has been at Michigan Tech, teaching and conducting research into geophysical observations of oil and gas production. He spent several years as the Chair of the Department of Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences, and became the Interim Dean of the College of Engineering in 2013, moving to the permanent position in 2014 and retiring in 2018.

Pennington has served as the President of the American Geological Institute and as the first vice president of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists. He was a Jefferson Science Fellow at the US Dept of State and the US Agency for International Development. He has published over thirty peer-reviewed papers and coauthored one book (with his students).

He received his degrees from Princeton University (1972), Cornell University (1976), and University of Wisconsin-Madison (1979).

Dr. Pennington worked in the Office of Infrastructure and Engineering within the Bureau of Economic Growth, Agriculture, and Trade at the U.S. Agency for International Development, and after the new Office of Science and Technology was created in spring of 2010, shared his appointment in that office. While he worked on issues relating to earthquake hazard in Afghanistan and science and engineering projects in Pakistan, the M7.0 Haiti earthquake occurred in January, and affected much of what he did after that date. He coordinated scientific and engineering teams heading to the Haiti, presented talks for non-technical audiences on the seismology of Haiti, and co-organized a workshop on informing Haiti's reconstruction with science and engineering.

We are fortunate to have Wayne living in Ivins Utah.