Charlie Kerans is Goldhammer Chair of Carbonate Geology at the Department of Geological Sciences, and co-Principal Investigator of the Bureau of Economic Geology’s Carbonate Reservoir Characterization Research Laboratory, Jackson School of Geosciences, The University of Texas at Austin. From 1985-1990 Kerans was a Research Associate and Research Scientist at the Bureau of Economic Geology, being named a Senior Research Scientist in 1992. His areas of focus are in carbonate sequence stratigraphy and reservoir characterization, with an emphasis on integrating outcrop analog information for improved understanding of the subsurface. He has won some 10 awards for papers and presentations including two Wallace Pratt awards for best published paper in AAPG, and the Dengo award for best paper presented at the International AAPG in South Africa in 2008. He has been both a U.S. and International AAPG Distinguished Lecturer and has worked with companies around the world on carbonate reservoir characterization projects principally in the Middle East and the Americas. He has conducted field work on carbonate analogs in the U.S., Arctic Canada, and Australia, and is currently focused on Mesozoic carbonate systems.