Two Professors Receive Prestigious SPE Awards
-
October 03, 2013
Two outstanding UT PGE faculty members received prestigious awards from the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE). Department Chair and Professor, Dr. Tad Patzek, received a Distinguished Membership in SPE and Dr. Kishore Mohanty accepted the Anthony F. Lucas Gold Medal during the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition (ATCE) on October 2, 2013 in New Orleans.
Dr. Tad Patzek
SPE awarded Dr. Patzek with the Distinguished Membership honor for his valuable accomplishments in higher education. Established in 1983, the Distinguished Membership award recognizes SPE members worthy of special acknowledgement by attaining distinction in the petroleum industry or in academia, or who have made significant contributions to SPE.
Between 1990 and 2008, Patzek was a professor of geoengineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to joining Berkeley, he was a researcher at Shell Development. His passion for energy resources brought him to UT PGE in 2008, where he is serving his second term as department chair. Patzek has participated in the global debate on energy supply schemes, giving hundreds of press interviews and lectures around the world. He is also a part of the Ocean Engineering Safety Advisory Committee to the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, concerned with drilling safety in the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic.
Dr. Kishore Mohanty
Dr. Mohanty received the Anthony F. Lucas Gold Medal, awarded by SPE in partnership with the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers. Established in 1936 by AIME as the first award to recognize contributions in petroleum engineering, this award is given to individuals who identify and develop new technology or concepts that will enhance the process of finding or producing oil.
Dr. Mohanty’s contributions to the oil production industry have been numerous. He pioneered wettability alteration as a key mechanism to enhance oil recovery. He has established world-class research programs on chemical enhanced oil recovery, near-miscible gas EOR, fractured reservoir EOR, pore-scale network modeling and gas recovery from hydrate reservoirs at ARCO, UH and UT. Dr. Mohanty has been a Distinguished Member of SPE since winning the Distinguished Member Award in 2007. He also received the Peer Apart: Top Technical Reviewers Award from SPE in the same year.
