Dr. M. Katherine Banks, vice chancellor and dean of engineering, has appointed Dr. I. Yucel Akkutlu holder of the George & Joan Voneiff Career Development Professorship in the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering. This endowed professorship appointment is effective as of April 1, 2014.
Akkutlu joined the petroleum engineering faculty at Texas A&M in January 2013. He holds a Ph.D. in petroleum engineering from the University of Southern California. He has been participating in industry-led research projects on 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) and American Chemical Society (ACS) 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, an associate professor, currently serves as the graduate advisor for the petroleum engineering department.