Dr. Ruud Weijermars joined the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University as a professor in November. Weijermars specializes in analytical modelling and finding the key parameters that control a process or system and his current research interests include geomechanics of reservoirs and wellbores and petroleum economics and energy system modeling.
“I am very pleased to welcome professor Ruud Weijermars to the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering," said Dan Hill, head of the department. “His analytical modelling is a great fit for the department.”
Weijermars was born in the Netherlands and received his bachelor’s degree in geology and his master’s degree in structural geology from the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. In 1987, he earned his Ph.D. based on laboratory modelling of mantle convection at the Hans Ramberg Tectonic Laboratory at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, which provided him with a solid understanding of fluid dynamics and continuum mechanics. He has published over 150 referred journal articles and his work has been widely cited.
He began his career in academia as an associate professor with the University of Uppsala. He has also held positions with ETH Zurich, The University of Texas at Austin, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals and mostly recently at Delft University of Technology. Prior to joining Texas A&M, Weijermars combined his academic position at Delft University of Technology with the energy strategy consultant firm of Alboran Energy Consultants.
Weijermars has written three books, including two classic geoscience textbooks, jointly sponsored by the Natural Science Research Councils of Sweden and Saudi Arabia: Principles of Rock Mechanics (Alboran Science Publishing, 1997) and Structural Geology and Map Interpretation (Alboran Science Publishing, 1997). His most recent book, Building Corporate IQ - Moving the Energy Business from Smart to Genius (Springer, London, 2011), provides a framework for practitioners of good leadership and measures for quantifying and improving the corporate IQ.
He was awarded the King Oscar Prize for Research by the University of Uppsala in 1991 and a Distinguished Researcher Award by the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in 1996. He served as a judge for the Petroleum Economist Energy Executive of the year award from 2006-2009 and is a registered nominator for the Russian Global Energy Prize. He is the founding editor and serves as the editor-in-chief of Energy Strategy Reviews, an Elsevier journal dedicated to energy systems modeling.