NEWS
NORMAN, Okla. – Last month, April Moreno-Ward successfully defended her doctoral dissertation in geophysics, capping a journey that began improbably with a degree in classics.
She is a seismic geomorphologist specializing in deep-water channel systems and machine learning applications for subsurface visualization. The applications stretch far beyond oil and gas: carbon capture and storage, mining, aquifer mapping, and fiber optic routing are all fields to which her work applies.
“Some people might think it’s very niche,” she said. “But realistically, it isn’t.”
April began her academic journey with an undergraduate degree in classics, chosen partly because four years of high school Latin had to lead somewhere, and partly because the stories were genuinely interesting. After graduation, the job market proved discouraging, and when she applied to a master’s program in the field, she was turned away for not having taken Greek.
She pivoted to anthropology and archaeology, drawn by a longstanding interest in rivers and the role water systems played in early civilizations. An archaeology professor noticed that passion and nudged her to a level 3000 geology class she had no prerequisites for. She took it anyway. In that class, she found the field that would eventually define her career and, bonus, met her husband. She earned her M.S. in Geology from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2010.
After years in oil and gas consulting, April built a career at Rose State College, earning tenure in the spring of 2025. But being the only geoscientist at her institution left her feeling cut off from the kind of intellectual community that pushes researchers.
She then met Heather Bedle, a professor in the Mewbourne College of Earth and Energy who uses machine learning to advance seismic interpretation. Bedle made a simple offer.
“She said, come do a Ph.D. with me,” April recalled. “And then I went home and Googled what machine learning was.”
She enrolled in January 2023. Last summer, she completed an internship at Occidental Petroleum. In nine weeks, she finished a project that drew enough attention that the company extended a full-time return offer. She turned it down and resigned her tenured position to accept a postdoc in Bedle’s lab instead. There, she'll serve as the applied geoscientist, connecting the lab's research to industry through case studies, technical reports, and speaking engagements.
The decision came down to a gap she kept seeing from the inside.
"Showing the application lags behind the research," she said. "People in industry need to see more quickly how the work is actually applicable."
Her roundabout path through classics, archaeology, and geology, she believes, made her a sharper scientist. Translating ancient Latin without complete information isn't so different from interpreting the subsurface with limited seismic data. "We don't have a whole lot of information, and we're doing the best we can. It's important to think about what the story is."
April’s parents are both first-generation college graduates and were models of persistence. Her mother returned to school while Moreno-Ward was in elementary school; her father earned two graduate degrees later in life.
April will be the first in her family to hold a Ph.D, but she may not be the last. Her 15-year-old son has started calculating how quickly he can finish his own, perhaps in astrophysics, before his mother's graduation age.
She's choosing to be touched by that.
About the University of Oklahoma
Founded in 1890, the University of Oklahoma is a public research university located in Norman, Oklahoma. As the state’s flagship university, OU serves the educational, cultural, economic and health care needs of the state, region and nation. For more information about the university, visit www.ou.edu.
In a tower simulation lab at the University of Oklahoma, Jovana Dragovic speaks in calm, precise instructions as aircraft line up on a virtual runway. Every call matters. Every second counts. It’s a high-pressure environment – one she has prepared for since the fifth grade.
Last month, April Moreno-Ward successfully defended her doctoral dissertation in geophysics, capping a journey that began improbably with a degree in classics. She is a seismic geomorphologist specializing in deep-water channel systems and machine learning applications for subsurface visualization.
One hundred and sixty-six University of Oklahoma undergraduate students eligible to participate in graduation ceremonies maintained a perfect 4.0 grade-point average throughout their academic program at OU. Of the total, 88 reside in Oklahoma.
