Structure and tectonics of the Puerto Rico-Virgin Islands platform
and
Multi-configuration Ground Penetrating Radar data.

Acknowledgements

There are three people who I especially want to thank. Without their help I would not have been able to move from The Netherlands to Austin, learn all the things that I have learned in the past four years, and complete my Ph.D. degree. In chronological order, the first person I want to thank is Evert Slob, who was invaluable for helping me explore the possibilities to obtain a Ph.D. degree in the United States, finish my thesis in a timely matter, and support me with the field work I conducted for my dissertation. The second person I want to thank is Paul Mann, who invited me to the cruise around the island of Puerto Rico, helped me with my geological interpretations and got me on to a quick start as a result of which I finished my dissertation within four years. The third person I want to thank is my supervisor Paul Stoffa, who gave me the opportunity, to continue working on Ground Penetrating Radar, supported me patiently, and guided me through my whole study.

Other people I want to thank are: my other committee members, Milo Backus, who always had some challenging questions, Mrinal Sen, who helped with the migration algorithms, Jacob Fokkema, who helped me with the equations and Brenda Kirkland; Nancy Grindlay and Jim Dolan, who were co-investigators of the cruise to Puerto Rico and co-authors of the two papers; Jim Simmons for explaining Alford rotation and multi-component seismic; Roberts Rogers for a copy of his finite difference modeling code; George Tsoflias for the very interesting cooperation in several aspects of the GPR; The Section of Applied Geophysics and Petrophysics of the Delft, University of Technology and TNO-FEL for providing the equipment and the availability of their GPR testing site; Edwin Van Der Holst for assistance during the field work.

For assistance with computer, university and money related questions I want to thank Arturo, Charlene, Jim, Judy, Kevin, Kurt, Lisa, Mark, Miriam, Patty, Steffen, Toni, and all the other people from the Institute for Geophysics. For their help with software, homework, and life in general I want to thank Alison, Anubrati, Donna, Eric, Faqi, Faruq, Imtiaz, Junru, Mehmet, Shane, Stefan, Vik, and all other students. I want to thank the student cruise fund, National Science Foundation grants NSF-OCE-9504118 and NSF-OCE-9796189, the Gale White Fellowship, the Thomas R. Banks Memorial Scholarship, the Teagle Fellowship, and the Arno P. (Dutch) Wendler Professional Development Fund for financial support. I especially want to thank Bill Galloway and Bill Fisher for hiring me for two years as a teaching assistant. I want to thank my family for their financial and motivational support, my other friends in Austin, especially Tricia, and everybody from Holland who visited in the last four years: it was a great, fun, awesome experience. Last but not least thanks to Lynn for smiling everyday I walked into the institute, it surely cheered me up.

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