RMAG and the Mines AAPG Student Chapter Present

101 Shortcourse Series

Practical Python for Earth Scientists

Saturday September 12, 2026

9 am to 4 pm

Course Instructor: Matthew W. Bauer, PG 

About this course...

Practical Python for Earth Scientists is a hands-on course intended to introduce basic concepts and give working examples of python code that can be used in daily geoscience workflows. No prior knowledge of python or other programming languages is necessary to attend this course.

Who should attend?

This course is tailored for geologists, geophysicists, petrophysicists, petroleum engineers, production engineers, landmen, and anyone else that would like to gain skills in practical python programming, data mining, and machine learning. While this course will use examples from the petroleum industry, any earth scientist will benefit from learning about geospatial and subsurface data analysis.

Course Goals

• Introduce the python programing language for the geoscientist.
• Introduce python libraries that allow integration into other software programs through reading, manipulating, and writing LAS well logs and shapefiles.
• Provide hands on examples of the application of Data Mining, Machine Learning, and Data Analytics to solve problems faced by a petroleum geologist.
• By the end of the course students should be able to adapt the provided examples for use with their own data.

Topics Covered

• Basic python syntax
• Loops, functions, and classes
• Sorting and plotting data (pandas and matplotlib)
• Local python installation (optional, requires admin rights)
• Geospatial data (e.g., shapefiles)
• Well logs (las files)
• Data scraping
• Machine-learning (unsupervised and supervised methods)

Course Requirements

Bring your own laptop and please have a Gmail account so you can use Colab. No experience required in python or other programming language. If you would like to install python locally you will need administrative rights on your local machine.

Course Instructor

Mr. Bauer is a quantitative geoscientist with over 20 years of experience helping clients turn complex data into business insights and innovation. He has led projects spanning spatial data science for subsurface operations, energy economics, and resource exploration, and has built ETL and analytics systems for a $75M renewable energy fund. He also managed a mineral portfolio exceeding 16,000 net acres. He currently is an Associate with Agapito Associates, LLC working in solution mining and reservoir storage.

An active educator and mentor, Mr. Bauer served as Affiliate Faculty at Colorado School of Mines and is a Past President of the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists. He regularly teaches Python courses for geoscience professional organizations and universities. He is a licensed professional geologist in Kansas and Louisiana.

Registration Details

• $50 for Members 
• Free for Student Members 
  • Are you a student and not a RMAG Member? Email staff@rmag.org with your student ID for a complimentary membership and class registration. 
• Class is unavailable for Non-Members (Become a member today)

Registration Closes Septmeber 8th

Refunds for the September 12th Python Course are only available until September 1st.