Mrinal K. Sen is a professor of Geophysics and holder of Morgan Davis Centennial chair in Petroleum Geology at the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin. During 2013 and 2014, Mrinal served as the director of the National Geophysical Research Institute, Hyderabad, India. He received his M.Sc degree from IIT Dhanbad and PhD from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA.

Mrinal is known internationally for his work on theoretical and computational seismology, and geophysical inversion. He has authored a textbook that was nominated for an award, co-authored another widely used textbook that is now in its second edition at Cambridge University Press, taught multiple short courses including one on FWI for SEG, and authored or co-authored twenty book chapters and over two hundred journal articles. Mrinal has received many awards, including the Honorary membership in the Society of Exploration Geophysicists “for extraordinary contributions as a geophysicist, educator and author,” the ‘Joseph C. Walter award for research excellence,’ the ‘distinguished educator award’ at the University of Texas, Decentennial Gold Medal of the Indian Geophysical Union, and the distinguished alumnus award from IIT(ISM) and the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He is the recipient of 2018 Virgil Kauffman gold medal of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists for making significant advancement in the sciences of exploration geophysics in the last five years.