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Congratulations to Dr. Gary Pope and the Center for Petroleum & Geosystems Engineering. Earlier this week it was
announced that Dr. Pope has been named to lead the Center for Frontiers of Subsurface Energy Security. One of 46 new
Energy Frontier Research Centers announced by the White House, this center will receive $15.5 million over a five-year
period in partnership with Sandia National Laboratory.
The goal of the center is to explain the movement or transport of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in
geological systems.
“Developing long-term solutions for our national energy security requires significant advances in understanding
geological systems where we can lock away the byproducts of energy consumption, such as carbon dioxide,” said Pope,
"The long term benefits from this improved understanding will extend far beyond the current focus on the storage of
greenhouse gases to understanding the stability of geological systems and materials that are far from equilibrium for
long periods of time--a Grand Challenge problem."
Dr. Arthur Ratzel, director of the Engineering Sciences Center at Sandia and Dr. Mary Wheeler, holder of the Ernest and
Virginia Cockrell Chair in Engineering at the university, are associate directors of the new center. From among the
PGE faculty, Drs. Balhoff, Bryant, Delshad, DiCarlo, Huh, Lake, Srinivasan and Wheeler all contributed to the proposal
and Drs. Steven Bryant and Sanjay Srinivasan will lead two of the four UT/Sandia project teams. Dr. Philip Bennett, of
the Jackson School of Geology, and Dr. Todd Arbogast of the Institute for Computational Engineering will also lead
project teams. This represents the strongest geotechnical team ever assembled to work together within such a center,
according to Pope.
More information on this and other EFRCs can be found on the DOE’s Web site at www.er.doe.gov/bes/EFRC.
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