History
MIT Earth Resources Laboratory was founded in 1982 by Prof. M. Nafi Toksöz, who was the director until 1999. During this period the lab, which was then housed in E34, focused on reservoir characterization and borehole science, supported by Founding Members as well as a “Borehole Consortium” made up of energy companies. During Prof. John Grotzinger’s directorship, from 2000-2003, ERL began expanding its expertise by engaging more faculty from the departments of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), and Mathematics, a trend that continued under Professor Robert van der Hilst’s leadership (2004-2011). In 2008, ERL joined the main geophysics and geology programs in the Green building (building 54), a move that inspired broad participation from EAPS faculty and which improved the exposure of ERL students to a broader spectrum of the Earth Sciences and introduced other EAPS students to the challenging problems of today’s subsurface energy research. In 2008 the Borehole Consortium was discontinued and its activities merged with the general research scope within a single Founding Member Consortium. In recent years, the lab has transitioned away from a focus on work relevant to oil/gas production, and increasingly focused on science and technology needed for the energy transition.
ERL Directors
M. Nafi Toksöz 1982- 2000
John Grotzinger 2000-2003
Robert van der Hilst 2003-2012
Bradford Hager 2012-2018
Laurent Demanet 2018-2025
Oliver Jagoutz 2025 –
Additional Resources
ERL Industry Consortium Reports 1983-2013
Digital Signal Analysis Group
When ERL was founded, MIT was already a leader in a key technology essential to the modern energy industry: digital seismology. This was largely due to the work of a prior industry-funded consortium, the Digital Signal Analysis Group, which was the first lab to digitize seismic data and use a computer to apply recently-developed signal processing techniques. Sven Treitel, a member of that group who later collaborated with ERL researchers, shared the story with us during a visit in 2019.
The Birth of Digital Seismology at MIT: An Interview with Dr. Sven Treitel
Seismic Digital Signal Processing and its origins at MIT (technical talk by Dr. Tretiel)