Movers & Shakers
MEMBER NEWS
Accepting the award were faculty members Laleh Behjat, P.Eng., PhD, Mohammad Moshirpour, E.I.T., PhD , and Milana Trifkovic, along with graduate students Emily Marasco, E.I.T. , and Stephanie Hladik, E.I.T. Dr. Behjat is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and APEGA’s 2015 recipient of the Women in Engineering and Geoscience Champion Award. Dr. Moshirpour is a software engineering instructor at the school. One of their most recent outreach initiatives was a Google-funded program called Google Ignite, a computer programming workshop for high school students. Elementary students have also been taught to code — skills that are in high demand in today’s digital world. Three other awards were presented to people and companies who are leading the way in oil and gas tech- nology innovation. Christopher Clarkson, P.Eng., PhD , a professor in the U of C’s Department of Geoscience and Research Chair in Unconventional Gas and Light Oil Research, was honoured for Outstanding Achievement in Applied Technology and Innovation. He’s a world-renowned expert in rate-transient analysis (RTA), a method petroleum engineers use to analyze production data from oil and gas reservoirs. RTA methods were originally created for conventional reservoirs, in which fossil fuels are relatively easy to recover. Dr. Clarkson’s pioneering research helped adapt and standardize RTA for use in unconventional reservoirs — ones that require hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas recovery. His work is critical to Alberta’s oil and gas industry, as more and
SCIENCE AND TECH LEADERS ASTech Award winners include (from left, photo left) Stuart Kinnear and Tom de Haas, P.Eng., and (photo right) Dr. Mohamed Gamal El-Din, P.Eng. Stuart Kinnear and Tom de Haas, P.Eng. , its Chief Operating Officer. Interface is using nanotechnology, in lab settings, to test how chemicals will react in oil and gas wells. It’s a much quicker and less expensive option than traditional downhole field tests, which can cost millions of dollars. more of the province’s oil and gas supply comes from unconventional reservoirs. The University of Alberta’s Mohamed Gamal El- Din, P.Eng., PhD , is the recipient of the Innovation in Oil Sands Research Award. He’s spent the last decade developing new sustainable methods to treat oil sands tailings water, a byproduct of oil sands extraction. It’s one of the biggest environmental challenges facing the oil sands industry. Currently, this process-affected water — a complex mixture of sand, silt, salt, heavy metals, and organic compounds — is stored in tailings ponds covering more than 220 square kilometres of land. Dr. Gamal El-Din, a professor of environmental engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is developing multi-barrier treatments that use physical, chemical, or biological means to filter, treat, and reclaim the water. One example is a biofiltration system he developed that uses all three approaches — and very little energy — to detoxify the water. Edmonton-based Interface Fluidics was the recipient of the Outstanding Science and Technology Start-Up Award. Accepting the award was the company’s CEO
22 | PEG WINTER 2017
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