Dr. Hernan Ugalde

Senior Consulting Geophysicist

DIP Geosciences – Canada

Biography

Hernan started his career in the Geological Survey of Chile (SERNAGEOMIN) in 1995, where he completed his M.Sc. (Geophysics) thesis work under the supervision of Dr. Gonzalo Yañez. In 1997 he moved to the newly created South America office of Paterson, Grant & Watson Limited (PGW) in Santiago, where he stayed until 2001.

In 2001 Hernan moved to Canada to engage in doctoral studies at the University of Toronto. He completed his Ph.D. under the supervision of Dr. Bernd Milkereit in 2006. In 2006 Hernan started a postdoc with Bill Morris at McMaster University. This triggered the quest for understanding data from a geological point of view. With Bill, Hernan started working in 3D modelling, and developing workflows for the understanding of remanent magnetization and how to model it, geologically. It was an amazing time, and in Hernan’s words “Bill told me everything I know…except for Matlab”. However, by 2011 the MAGGIC lab ran out of funds and Hernan decided to go back to PGW.
In PGW, Hernan moved from small processing and interpretation projects into country scale ones in Ecuador, Nigeria, the DRC and many other places. In 2015 Hernan became Vice-President of PGW. By then he also started teaching geophysics at Brock University. By September 2018, the thirst for teaching and research was strong enough to make Hernan leave PGW to spend more time teaching and working on research with Bill.

DIP Geosciences came to life, and the journey is just beginning…Hernan now teaches Advanced Structural Geology, Field Camp and Exploration Geophysics at Brock University. He has active research projects with Bill on remanence, full tensor magnetics and geological understanding of geophysical data. He collaborates with Intrepid Geophysics and Tensor Research from Australia.
Constantly learning, and always happy to teach and try new ideas.