Shelia Guberman

In 1986 the team published a prognostic map for discovering giant oil and gas fields at the Andes in South America based on abiogenic petroleum origin theory. The model proposed by Prof. Yury Pikovsky (Moscow State University) assumes that petroleum moves from the mantel to the surface through permeable channels created at the intersection of deep faults. The technology uses 1) maps of morphostructural zoning (method proposed and developed by Prof. E.Rantsman), which outlines the morphostructural nodes (intersections of faults), and 2) pattern recognition program that identify nodes containing giant oil/gas fields. It was forecasted that eleven nodes, which had not been developed at that time, contain giant oil or gas fields. These 11 sites covered only 8% of the total area of all the Andes basins. 30 years later (in 2018) was published the result of comparing the prognosis and the reality. Since publication of the prognostic map in 1986, only six giant oil/gas fields were discovered in the Andes region: Cano–Limon, Cusiana, Capiagua, and Volcanera (Llanos basin, Colombia), Camisea (Ukayali basin, Peru), and Incahuasi (Chaco basin, Bolivia). All discoveries were made in places shown on the 1986 prognostic map as promising areas.

In the middle of the 20th century, the attention of seismologists was attracted by the phenomenon of chains of earthquakes consistently arising along big faults. Later it was interpreted as waves of tectonic strain In 1975 Guberman proposed the D-waves theory that separates the local processes of stress accumulation and the triggering of earthquakes. The basic postulates of this theory are: a) a strong earthquake changes the distribution of mass in the Earth’s core and accordingly its rate of rotation ω; b) at times when ω reaches a local minimum the disturbances occur at both poles, which propagate along meridians at a constant rate of 0.15°/year (D waves); c) A strong earthquake occurs at the place where tectonic stresses have accumulated, and at a time when two D waves (from poles N and S) have met at that point. (Fig ).

He is the son of Aizik Guberman (writer, poet) and his wife Etya (teacher). From 1947 to 1952 Guberman studied at the Institute of Electrical Communications, Odessa, USSR, graduating in radio engineering. From 1952 to 1958 he worked as field geophysicist in the Soviet oil industry. From 1958 to 1961 he studied as a postgraduate at the Oil and Gas Institute in Moscow. In 1962 he received a PhD. in nuclear physics, followed by a PhD. in applied mathematics in 1971. In 1971 he was appointed for full professorship in computer science. After authoring the first applied pattern recognition program in 1962, Guberman specialized in artificial intelligence implementing principles of Gestalt perception in computer programs for geological data analysis. In 1966 he was invited by the outstanding mathematician of the XX century Prof. I. Gelfand to lead the Artificial Intelligence team in Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He applied the pattern recognition technology to earthquake prediction, oil and gas exploration, handwriting recognition, speech compression, and medical imaging. From 1989 to 1992 Guberman held the chair professorship at Moscow Open University (Department of Geography). Since 1992 he is living in the US. Guberman is the inventor of the handwriting recognition technology implemented in the commercial product by the company "Paragraph International" founded by S. Pachikov, and used today by Microsoft in Windows CE. He is author of core technologies for five US companies, and owns a patent on speech compression.

Shelia Guberman (born 25 February 1930, Ukraine, USSR) is a scientist in computer science, nuclear physics, geology, geophysics, medicine, artificial intelligence and perception. He proposed the D-waves theory of Earth seismicity, algorithms of Gestalt-perception (1980) and Image segmentation, and programs for the technology of oil and gas fields exploration (1985).

2. Any consonant in speech appears on the background of a vowel. The last consonant in the word, is pronounced on the background of the neutral vowel [ə]. In clusters the consonants are produced in parallel with [ə] except the last one. In the past in Russian writing after consonant at the end of the word has to be written a special character denoting the neutral vowel – Ъ (the rule was canceled in 1918).