TUPREP - Key Persons

Dr. Albert C. Reynolds is the Senior Technical Advisor of TUPREP and Emeritus Professor of Petroleum Engineering and Mathematics. A faculty member at the U. of Tulsa since 1970, Reynolds has served as associate graduate dean, associate director of research, and Chairman of the Dept. of Petroleum Engineering. He holds a BA degree from the U. of New Hampshire, an MS degree from Case Institute of Technology, and a PhD degree from Case Western Reserve University, all in Mathematics. Reynolds received the 1983 SPE Distinguished Achievement Award for Petroleum Engineering Faculty, the 2003 SPE Reservoir Description and Dynamics Award, the 2005 SPE Formation Evaluation Award and the 2013 SPE John Franklin Carll Award. He is a SPE Distinguished Member since 1999 and became an SPE Honorary Member in 2014. His research areas include inverse problems, assisted history matching, uncertainty quantification, reservoir and production optimization, data-driven models, machine learning, well testing and reservoir simulation. Click to view his vita.

Dr. Cihan Alan

Job Titles:

Research Associate

Dr. Cihan Alan joins TUPREP as a Research Associate. He received the B.Sc. , the M.Sc. and the Ph.D. degree in Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering from the Istanbul Technical University, Turkey in 2006, 2012 and 2022, respectively. Previously, he worked as a Reservoir Simulation Engineer in Saudi Aramco. Having also worked at Schlumberger in Saudi Arabia as Well Testing Field Engineer and Core Laboratories in Abu Dhabi as PVT Analysis Engineer, his 8+ years of industry experience is helping a lot in his research which mainly includes Reservoir Simulation and History Matching of Well Testing Data. In 2012, he was a Research Assistant with Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey. He has a granted U.S. patent with Saudi Aramco regarding Reservoir Management. He had intensive industry trainings such as Surface Well Testing, Multiphase Flow Meters, Wireless Telemetry, PVT Lab operations with Schlumberger in Paris and Edmonton. He is a Microsoft Certified Software Engineer holding MCP, MCAD.NET, MCSD.NET since 2005. In 2006, he also worked in Microsoft Authorized Business Partner in Istanbul. All his graduation theses on the subject of Reservoir Simulation presented and awarded in SPE Student Paper/Presentation Contests in Amsterdam, Ravenna and Zagreb respectively.

Dr. Leslie G. Thompson

Job Titles:

Associate

Dr. Leslie G. Thompson is an Associate PE Consultant at Whitson AS and a Research Associate of TUPREP. Previously, he was a Senior Reservoir Engineer at Cimarex Energy (now Coterra) between 2012 and 2022, and before that, an Associate Professor of Petroleum Engineering at the University of Tulsa for 23 years. His research interests include reservoir/wellbore flow modeling and rate and pressure transient analysis in unconventional reservoirs. Dr. Thompson holds a PhD in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Tulsa. He is a member of SPE and previously served as a technical editor for SPE Journal.

Dr. Mahdi Khodayar

Job Titles:

Assistant Professor With the Department of Computer Science

Dr. Mahdi Khodayar is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Computer Science, The University of Tulsa, and Research Associate of TUPREP. He received the B.Sc. degree in computer engineering and the M.Sc. degree in artificial intelligence from the Khajeh Nasir Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 2013 and 2015, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, USA, in 2020. In 2017, he was a Research Assistant with the College of Computer and Information Science, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA. His main research interests include machine learning and statistical pattern recognition. He is focused on deep learning, sparse modeling, and spatiotemporal pattern recognition. Dr. Khodayar has served as a Reviewer for many reputable journals in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, including the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, the IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, the IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy, and the IEEE Transactions on Power Systems.

Dr. Mustafa Onur

Dr. Mustafa Onur is the McMan Professor and Chairman of the McDougall School of Petroleum Engineering at University of Tulsa, and the Director of TUPREP. Before joining TU, he was the Professor of Istanbul Technical University (ITU), Turkey, from 1989 to 2016. He also held the Schlumberger Professorial Chair at the Department of Petroleum Engineering at Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP), Malaysia, from 2012 to 2014. Onur holds a BS degree from the Middle East Technical University in Turkey and MS and PhD degrees from the University of Tulsa, all in petroleum engineering. He is the recipient of the 2010 SPE Formation Evaluation Award and a distinguished SPE member since 2014. He has served on the editorial committees of SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering and SPE Journal. Previously, he served as the Executive Editor of SPE Journal from to 2013 to 2016. Currently, he serves as the Associate Editors of SPE Journal and Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering. His research interests include pressure/temperature-transient analysis, wireline formation testing, reservoir modeling and simulation, nonlinear parameter estimation, enhanced oil recovery methods, and geothermal reservoir engineering. Click to view his vita.