Anne Yanni, a second-year graduate student in West Virginia University’s geology program, has won a prestigious scholarship from the SIPES Foundation.

The foundation presents awards to outstanding earth science or engineering students on behalf of the Society of Independent Professional Earth Scientists, an organization of more than 1,200 geology professionals who work primarily in domestic energy exploration.

Yanni is planning to use the $1,250 award to travel to Houston in September for the annual American Association of Petroleum Geologists and Society of Exploration Geophysicists Student Expo, where she will have the opportunity to see other students’ research and to introduce herself to prospective employers. She is scheduled to graduate in the spring.

“This is the big one,” Yanni said of the expo. “If you want to know what is going on in the industry and have a chance to work for the best companies, you have to go to where they are, and there’s a lot of opportunity in Houston.”

Yanni spent the summer working with the Dominion Exploration and Production Company in Indiana, Pa. For her thesis, she’s mapping and analyzing the Marcellus Shale, a black shale that contains natural gas, in the Northern Appalachian Basin in Pennsylvania.

“I think I was attracted to the petroleum industry because they have the resources to both create and finish their projects,” Yanni said. “My personality is such that I love to see the results of my work.”

She applied for the SIPES Foundation Earth Science scholarship at the suggestion of two of her professors, but had little idea just how distinguished an honor she’d received until she saw the list of other students who had won, students from some the nation’s top geology schools, including the Colorado School of Mines and the University of Oklahoma.

Yanni lived in several foreign countries as a child and graduated from high school in Japan, but chose to return to the United States and WVU, in part, because her parents are native West Virginians. She stayed because she liked the easy interaction between WVU professors and their students.

“The department is really open,” Yanni said. “The professors are willing to help at any time. I’ve had professors meet me on the weekend if I needed something. There’s not that barrier between student and teacher that exists at some universities.”

-WVU-

aj/09/01/09

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