First Place Grover E. Murray Best Published Paper Awards
Richard H. Fillon and Paul N. Lawless

Lower Miocene - Early Pliocene Deposystems in the Gulf of Mexico: Regional Sequence Relationships

Richard H. "Dick" Fillon is senior associate with Earth Studies Associates, an exploration and geoscience research company he founded in New Orleans in 1999. Dick earned a B.S. degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1966, an M.S. in 1970 from the University of Vermont, and a Ph.D. in 1972 from the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography. Dick began his career in the petroleum industry in 1966 with Chevron Geophysical Company in Houston and Chevron Oil Company in New Orleans. He held a postdoctoral fellowship from 1972-1973 at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, worked as a Geological Survey of Canada research scientist at Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Nova Scotia from 1974-1980, and was an Associate Professor of Research at the University of South Carolina from 1980-1984. From 1985 until taking early retirement in 1999 he worked as an explorationist with Texaco's Gulf of Mexico deep water and shelf exploration units, and as a biostratigrapher with Texaco's geological laboratory in New Orleans.

Paul N. Lawless received his B.S. in Geology (1986) and M.S. in Geology (1989) from Louisiana State University. His thesis looked at the effect of the LaSalle Arch upon Wilcox Group stratigraphy in central Louisiana. While in school, he worked part-time for the U. S. Geological Survey, Water Resources Division in Baton Rouge. Following graduation, he has worked 11 years in the petroleum industry in New Orleans. He has predominantly worked Onshore South Louisiana trends but spent several years working Deepwater Offshore Louisiana. He has worked for Texaco, for Shell Offshore, and the last two and a half years for Dominion E&P (formerly CNG). Paul has published several papers and has won the GCAGS Best Poster and SEPM 3^rd Best Paper in 1997 entitled "Gulf of Mexico Cenozoic Biostratigraphic, Lithostratigraphic, and Sequence Stratigraphic Event Chronology", by: Lawless, P. N., R. H. Fillon, and R. G. Lytton. He has served as the 1^st Vice President (1999-00) and the Editor (2000-01) for the Southeastern Geophysical Society. He is a member of the AAPG, SEG, NOGS, SGS, and the GCSSEPM.

Second Place Grover E. Murray Best Published Paper Award
H. E. Denman and J.A. Adamick

Play Opportunities for the Eastern Gulf of Mexico

H. Edward Denman is a Senior Geophysicist with Samson Lonestar in Houston, Texas. He received a B.S. degree in Geology from Georgia State University in 1972 and a M.S. in Geophysics from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1975. Ed is assigned to the offshore exploration function at Samson with emphasis on frontier areas and international projects. Prior activities included co-founding and serving as a principal of the Excalibur Interpretation Company. Previously he worked with international and domestic affiliates of the Exxon Corporation with assignments in Europe, North and South America requiring acreage evaluations, data trades and prospect generation. Ed has prior consulting and contract experience with both Fairfield Industries and Dames and Moore Consultants.

John Adamick received a B.S. degree in Geology from Texas A&M University in 1983 and an M.S. degree in Geology from Stephen F. Austin State University in 1987. In 1995, he attended Harvard University and completed the Program for Management Development. John began his career with TGS Geophysical Company in 1986 and has served the company in numerous capacities. He is currently Vice-President of Business Development for TGS-NOPEC Geophysical Company. During his career he has authored and presented papers on several subjects including sub-salt exploration, Lower Cretaceous stratigraphy, amplitude versus offset (AVO) analysis, and Eastern Gulf of Mexico exploration.

Third Place Grover E. Murray Best Published Paper Award
Marc B. Edwards

Origin and Significance of Retrograde Failed Shelf Margins; Tertiary Northern Gulf Coast Basin

Marc Edwards has been an independent consulting geologist based in Houston for 20 years. Prior to that, he worked for the Norwegian Continental Shelf Institute in Oslo and Trondheim, Norway, and for the Bureau of Economic Geology in Austin.

As a consultant, Marc has divided his time between four main tasks: 1) creating multi-client non-proprietary regional studies of important productive trends in the Gulf Coast Basin, such as the Yegua, Miocene and Wilcox; 2) providing proprietary consulting services to the exploration and production sectors by interpreting a range of data types from 2- and 3-D seismic to well logs, whole cores, and dipmeter; 3) authoring publications that present new concepts of use to the industry; and 4) offering short course workshops on the topic of stratigraphic interpretation in growth faulted areas.

The organizing theme of his approach to stratigraphy is to devise predictive models that are based on the integration of large quantities of data by referring to significant geological processes. He his particularly confused by the fact that most papers on stratigraphy these days begin with the words "sequence stratigraphy of," regardless of whether they cover depositional environments, vertical and lateral facies associations, or basin fill architecture (among others!), and end with "this paper therefore demonstrates that sequence stratigraphic principles provide a robust basis for understanding the complex relationships …etc., etc.…" His initial interest in geology was sparked by experiencing the urge to identify pebbles that he had picked up while chasing frogs and salamanders in New York State.

He holds a B.S. degree in Geology from The City College, New York, and a Ph.D. from Oxford University.

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