Kees Wapenaar was awarded the Virgil Kauffman Gold Medal for his thorough and extensive theoretical work on interferometric methods in the field of multidimensional acoustical and elastic imaging, and on the practical implementation of his theory with the aim to retrieve subsurface reflection responses from ambient noise recordings. Whereas others in the field followed a more physically intuitive and kinematically oriented approach, Wapenaar established a rigorous foundation for the field based on Green’s theorem and the reciprocity theorem. The application of seismic interferometry with ambient noise to retrieve 3D subsurface reflections is a direct consequence of his theory. Successful field tests have been carried out by and in cooperation with Shell. His work is now well connected to the industry practice and he has been very active in transferring technical knowledge about the new subject of seismic interferometry to a broad audience.