Michael Burianyk was born and raised on the Canadian Prairies. He graduated from the University of Saskatchewan with a BSc in physics and geophysics, and later received from the same institution an MSc in geological sciences, writing his thesis on seismic data he helped collect on an Arctic ice station. Next, he earned a PhD in geophysics from the University of Alberta, studying the crust and lithosphere of western Canada, planning and participating in several LITHOPROBE field programs. After spending time in academic research, he moved to the petroleum industry where he gained expertise in amplitude vs. offset methods, seismic inversion, rock physics, and seismic petrophysics with Core Labs and later Shell Canada. He lived in The Netherlands for a decade, working with Shell’s R&D group in gravity and magnetics and later in their software development division as a geoscience subject matter expert directing the development of software applications and creating associated workflows for gravity and magnetics, EM, QI seismic, seismic balancing, surface gridding, and geodetics. Currently, he lives in Nice, France, creating geophysical educational material and pursuing other writing projects.