Dr. Tinker’s academic training and professional work experience are in carbonate stratigraphy and reservoir characterization. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in the Cretaceous of northern Mexico and the Permian of West Texas; extensive core- and log-based regional subsurface work in the Devonian of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin; and integrated core, log, and seismic 3D reservoir characterization and modeling in the Permian Basin of West Texas. Dr. Tinker has served on dozens of graduate student committees at UT Austin and taught a graduate course in reservoir characterization. He has received best paper awards for work appearing in the AAPG Bulletin and the Journal of Sedimentary Research.

Since 2000, Dr. Tinker has been deeply involved in academic administration, professional society leadership, government policy, program and infrastructure growth, and global outreach. His research efforts are centered on the interface between global energy supply and demand, environmental impacts of energy, and economic drivers and scale of energy. He calls these “the Three E’s” and the overlap space “The Radical Middle.” Dr. Tinker’s passion is understanding and communicating the framework, challenges, timeframe, and scale of the energy transition, which he defines as lifting the world from poverty and minimizing the environmental impacts of solar, wind, batteries, nuclear, oil, coal, and natural gas. With Harry Lynch and the team at the Switch Energy Alliance, Tinker has produced a world class collection of energy education materials and programs, available at SwitchOn.org.  These include feature length films Switch and Switch On, the Switch Energy Lab, the Museum Film Energy Makes Our World, over 300 short format films (primers, 101’s site visits, expert interviews, and more), a major international Case Competition, the Switch Energy Classroom in thousands of high school classrooms, and much more.

Dr. Tinker has served on the Jackson School’s Executive Committee since the school formed in 2005. He acted as Associate Dean of Research in the Jackson School of Geosciences for eight years. Dr. Tinker is a member of many professional societies and serves on numerous councils and committees. He has been a member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) since 1982 and served as AAPG president in 2008–2009, Distinguished Ethics Lecturer in 2005-2006, and Distinguished Lecturer in 1997. Dr. Tinker has been a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) since 1982, and served as an SPE Distinguished Lecturer in 2002–2003. He has also served as president of the Austin Geological Society, the Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies, and the American Geosciences Institute. Since becoming the State Geologist of Texas in 2000, Dr. Tinker has been a member of the Association of American State Geologists (AASG), serving as its president in 2006–2007. Dr. Tinker is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America (GSA) and in 2013 served as the GSA Halbouty Distinguished Lecturer.

Dr. Tinker’s involvement in government policy spans local, state, federal, and international venues. In 2006, the U.S. Secretary of Energy appointed him to serve on the National Petroleum Council (NPC); he currently serves on the NPC’s Committee on Resource Development. In 2007, he was appointed by the governor of Texas to the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC). From 2003 to 2009, he served on The National Academies National Research Council Board on Energy and Environmental Systems (BEES). He has also served as the director of the Petroleum Technology Transfer Council (PTTC), heading the Texas Regional Lead Organization from 2000 to 2012. He was a member of the National Academies Roundtable on Oil and Gas and the Aspen Institute’s Shale Governance Forum. Dr. Tinker has testified before the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives and briefed Senate and House staff. As State Geologist, Scott was appointed by the lieutenant governor of Texas in 2001 to serve on the Oil Field Cleanup Fund Advisory Committee, and by the governor of Texas in 2005 to lead the national competition to bring the clean coal project FutureGen to Texas, in which Texas placed two sites in the final four.

Dr. Tinker currently serves on Shell’s Science Council, the Board of Trustees at Trinity University, is a Trustee Associate for Southwest Research Institute, and on the Alumni Advisory Board of Earth and Environmental Systems at the University of Michigan. He has served on Brigham Exploration’s Public Board of Directors, BP’s Technical Advisory Council, Sandia National Laboratory’s Geoscience Foundation Advisory Board, QTSI’s Board of Directors, the National Academies Board on Energy and Environmental Systems, and the Board of Managers for X-Microwave. He speaks often with industry Boards and C-Suites. Dr. Tinker is a trustee of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists Foundation and the American Geological Institute Foundation. He and his wife Allyson contribute time and resources to educational organizations and institutions that serve society.

Dr. Tinker has given more than 850 invited talks and keynote lectures in over 60 countries. He attempts to reach a broad spectrum of stakeholders through presentations, seminars, editorial pieces, media interviews, podcasts, webcasts, web interviews, and films. Audiences include professional educators, accountants, lawyers, insurers, bankers, young professionals, women’s leadership groups, nongovernment organizations, industry and government staffers, energy regulators, senior citizens, K–12 students, farmers, shipbuilders, and many more.

Dr. Tinker was featured in the award-winning State of Tomorrow, an energy-related television piece for the Public Broadcasting System that was co-produced by The University of Texas Foundation and Alpheus Media and appeared in the NBC production Unconventional. He is sought for print, radio, and TV interviews, as well as for opinion/editorial pages, on issues ranging from federal and state energy policy to environmental and societal energy impact. He has written in or been quoted in Time Magazine, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Variety, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, Forbes, Oil and Gas Investor, Texas CEO magazine, Texas Monthly, Austin American-Statesman, Tulsa World Online, Geo ExPro magazine, E&P News, Business Insider, Dallas Observer, San Antonio Express-News, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Bloomberg, Reuters, NPR, CNN Online, EmeraldPlanet.org, EarthSky.org, EnergyWire, and more.

Dr. Tinker is invited to speak hundreds of times per year somewhere in the world to audiences of all kinds: from Boards of Directors to university and high school students; keynote addresses at major international conferences to invitation only gatherings of thought leaders and decision makers. Read Less ^