I. Yucel Akkultu, associate professor in the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University, will be receiving the AIME Rossiter W. Raymond Memorial Award at the Society of Petroleum Engineers annual banquet on Oct. 28 in Amsterdam. This award from the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers (AIME) recognizes the authors of the best paper in an AIME constituent society journal having the lead author under the age of 35. Akkultu and his co-author are being recognized for the paper, “Multiscale Gas Transport in Shales with Local Kerogen Heterogeneities.”
Department Head Dan Hill said, ”We are very proud of Professor Akkutlu for receiving the Rossiter Raymond Award. Unlike most professional society awards, this award is given to recognize a specific technical achievement - - the publication of the best technical paper in the AIME literature having a lead author under the age of 35. Notably, because AIME has four constituent societies, an SPE member receives this award only once every four years. Yucel’s selection for this award makes him the faculty’s third recipient, joining previous winners Professors Akhil Datta-Gupta and John Killough. Congratulations, Dr. Akkutlu for this outstanding achievement!”
Akkutlu joined the faculty at Texas A&M in January 2013 and currently serves as the graduate advisor for the department. He holds a Ph.D. in petroleum engineering from the University of Southern California. He has been participating in industry-led research projects on the development of new laboratory measurement techniques and protocols in quantifying fluid storage and transport processes in organic-rich resource shales coupled with geomechanics. His current research is on fluid thermodynamics and capillarity in nano-porous materials, and on the scaling-up and simulation of transport processes in multi-scale pore structures.
He is executive editor of the SPE Journal, and serves the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) reviewing proposals related to upstream petroleum research. He received the 2012 SPE A-Peer-Apart honorary award and SPE outstanding service award 2008-2010.
Akkutlu will be joining four other faculty members from the petroleum engineering department who are receiving SPE International Awards at the SPE banquet.