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CORVALLIS - Robert Yeats, a professor emeritus of geosciences at Oregon State University and an internationally recognized expert on earthquakes, has received the Michel T. Halbouty Human Needs Award from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.

The award recognizes Yeats' career contributions in using the techniques and data of subsurface petroleum geology to create a new field of earthquake science.

Yeats began his career as a petroleum geologist and helped develop techniques to analyze faults using data that had been originally obtained by oil company exploration, much of it in southern California. He has also led efforts to prevent the loss of this valuable data, which sometimes occurs when industry exploration efforts are terminated.