A group of faculty from The University of Tulsa were honored with SPE international awards at the 2018 Society of Petroleum Engineers Annual Meeting September 25 in Dallas. The SPE recognizes members who have made outstanding contributions to the organization and the petroleum engineering industry.
SPE Honorary Membership
Stefan Miska is the Jonathan Detwiler Endowed Chair Professor of Petroleum Engineering. He has published more than 200 technical papers in the area of drilling and completions. His current research interests include drilling mechanics, directional/horizontal drilling, wellbore hydraulics and more recently geomechanics. In his career, Ziska has taught at the University of Mining of Metallurgy in Krakow, Poland, at the Norwegian Institute of Technology, and at New Mexico Tech. In 1992, he joined Tulsa as chair of its petroleum engineering department. He became director of Tulsa’s Drilling Research Projects (TUDRP) in 1996 and served in that role until July 2017. He has also worked as a consultant for numerous oil and service companies, and he has taught numerous industry courses.
Miska served as technical editor for the SPE Drilling and Completion Journal and was a member of the SPE Drilling and Completion advisory committee. In addition to being named an SPE Distinguished Member, he received the Distinguished Petroleum Engineering Faculty Award in 2000 and the Drilling Engineering Award in 2004. He holds master of science, doctorate and doctor of sciences degrees from the University of Mining and Metallurgy in Krakow.
Distinguished Service Award
Professor Emeritus Mohan Kelkar joined TU in 1983 as an assistant professor of petroleum engineering and retired as the Williams Endowed Chair of Petroleum Engineering in 2018. He chaired the university’s petroleum engineering department from 2002 to 2016. He has written more than 60 peer-reviewed articles and has made more than 250 technical presentations. He has also authored three books, including the SPE-published Applied Reservoir Characterization Using Geostatistics. Kelkar has been extensively involved in SPE service activities over the last 35 years. He served on local section board of directors for more than 15 years and served on SPE Board of Directors from 2010 to 2013. He has been involved with the SPE Petroleum Engineer Faculty Colloquium since 1991 and has played an active role in various committees. He holds a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering from the University of Mumbai and a master of science degree in petroleum engineering and a doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh.
Projects, Facilities and Construction Award
Siamack Shirazi is a professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Erosion/Corrosion Research Center (E/CRC) and director of TU Sand Management Projects, in addition to other petroleum engineering consortia at TU that he has contributed to and co-founded. In his 30-year teaching career, he has advanced innovative solutions for erosion mitigation for the oil field. He has more than 500 published works, technical, and invited presentations, most of them relating to oil and gas industry applications, and he has participated in several SPE-sponsored symposiums on sand management and pipeline erosion/corrosion. Shirazi holds bachelor of science, master of science, and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of New Mexico.
Reservoir Description and Dynamics Award
Mustafa Onur is the McMan Professor and Chairman of the McDougall School of Petroleum Engineering. Before joining TU in 2016, he spent 27 years as a professor of petroleum and natural gas engineering at Istanbul Technical University in Turkey. He was the Schlumberger Professorial Chair at the Department of Petroleum Engineering for Universiti Teknologi Petronas in Malaysia from 2012 to 2014. Onur was co-executive editor of the SPE Journal from 2012 to 2015 and has served in associate and technical editor roles for the SPE Journal and the SPE Reservoir Evaluation and Engineering Journal. Onur received the SPE Formation Evaluation Award in 2010 and became an SPE Distinguished Member in 2014. He holds a bachelor of science in petroleum engineering from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, and master of science and Ph.D. degrees from TU.
SPE Distinguished Member Award
Shoham Ovadia is the Floyd M. Steven Distinguished Professor of Petroleum Engineering. His research and teaching interests include production, transportation and separaation of multiphase flow and two-phase flow modeling. He holds a bachelor of science degree from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, a master of science from the University of Houston and a doctorate from Tel Aviv University.