"There were some really important and interesting measurement problems that were non medical, but most venture dollars went into medical than what you'd think from the the market size for the most important measurement problems..."

In this episode Ian and I have a lengthy discussion on the challenges of data measurement and management in oil and gas. The industry is heavily dependent on the data it gathers from sensors, and dramatic improvements in telecommunications and analytics has thoroughly upended how companies can approach the management of their data. Topics include data uncertainty, how much measurement is too much, the impact of better measurement for careers in the industry, and much else besides. 

"When the original IT infrastructure was built, it was built with the assumption baked in that you had to curate most of your data before it left the field."

Ian Burgess is President and co-founder of Validere. He is the technical and innovation lead and has become one of the leading industry experts on commodity measurement, emissions and carbon sequestration measurement, and the emerging carbon markets.

"If you think about geoscience and all of the advances that have happened up to and including the shale revolution in downhole, it just seems like it can't be true that the reason why there's a data management problem, whether you're looking at emissions or quantities themselves, is because oil and gas operators don't like technology."

Ian is an interdisciplinary scientist whose inventions have been recognized with an R&D 100 Award and featured in Scientific American, Chemical & Engineering News, Nature Photonics, and Materials Today. He has a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Harvard and a Bachelor’s in Math and Physics from the University of Waterloo. 

"There's not enough emphasis placed on understanding the uncertainty in a piece of data, and accounting for what affects that uncertainty and what doesn't."

USEFUL LINKS

• LinkedIn profiles (personal, business): 

• Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-burgess-35966337/

• Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/validere/

• Twitter handles:

• @validere

• Facebook pages:

• https://www.facebook.com/valideretechnologies/

• Website: 

•  https://bit.ly/3Dw7fcF

• Interesting article by Ian:

• https://bit.ly/40wwCFc