Associate Professor - Geophysics, University of Houston

Jiajia Sun

Dr. Jiajia Sun is currently Associate Professor of Geophysics in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Houston. He received his Ph.D. in geophysics from Colorado School of Mines in 2015. His recent research interests include (1) developing advanced methods for critical minerals and rare earth element deposit exploration by integrating geophysics, geology and drillhole data; and (2) solving geophysical inverse problems and assessing uncertainty in both Bayesian and deep learning frameworks. He is General Co-Chair of 2026 Critical Minerals Forum to be held on October 27-29, 2026, in Vancouver, Canada. He was Chair of the SEG Mining and Mineral Exploration Committee from 2024-2025. He received Honorable Mention for Best Paper in Geophysics in 2015. Three of his papers were highlighted in Geophysics Bright Spots in The Leading Edge. He received the J. Clarence Karcher Award from SEG in 2021. He and his co-authors recently received the Best Oral Paper Award for the geoscience themes at IMAGE ’25 for their work on creating geologically informed training data with application to critical mineral exploration.