Four faculty members in the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University were honored with faculty awards at the recent Industry Board dinner in September. The awards, which were presented for the first time, were generously funded by individuals and companies who are represented on the department’s Industry Board. William D. McCain received the ConocoPhillips Non-Tenured Track Excellence in Teaching Faculty Award; Michael King received the Karen and Larry A. Cress ’76 Excellence in Teaching Faculty Award; Ding Zhu was awarded the Karen E. Olson ’87 and Louis H. Turner Excellence in Research Faculty Award; and Bryan Maggard received the Superior Energy Services Excellence in Service Faculty Award. Each award winner also received an additional and generous gift of $5,000.
(McCain and A.D. Hill)
William D. “Bill” McCain is a visiting professor at Texas A&M. His 45-year history in petroleum engineering includes both academic and industry positions, including 11 years as head of the petroleum engineering department at Mississippi State University. McCain gained his early experience with Esso Research Laboratories from 1956 to 1963 and began teaching at Mississippi State in 1963. He served in the U.S. Army from 1976 until 1984, retiring as a brigadier general. He first joined the faculty at Texas A&M in 1984.
Since 1987, he has worked with projects in reservoir engineering and simulation, corrosion abatement, surface processing, NGL plants, compositional modeling, and miscible flooding as a consultant, first with Cawley, Gillespie & Associates and then with S.A. Holditch & Associates until its purchase by Schlumberger. McCain has consulted for several hundred clients and taught short courses for SPE and several major oil companies world-wide. His textbooks on the properties of petroleum fluids and petroleum reservoir fluid property correlations have been the standards for many years.
(King and Hill)
Michael J. King is a professor and holder of the LeSuer Chair in Reservoir Management in Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M, where he has taught since 2009. He is also the assistant department head for staff administration. King has received two SPE awards — the Distinguished Member Award in 2013 and the Reservoir Description and Dynamics Award in 2011. He was recently named a CMG Foundation Chair for the Computer Modelling Group, Ltd. In 2012, he received the Energistics Volunteer Recognition Program Award. King holds a Ph.D. degree in physics from Syracuse University.
His current research focuses on upscaling and streamline methodologies, with extensions to unconventional resources. He conducted successful research on reservoir engineering and reservoir modeling, with special expertise in fluid flow, reservoir simulation, upscaling of geologic models for flow simulation, streamline modeling, and 3D reservoir modeling workflows. King is well known for his contributions to the theory and practice of streamline simulation technology. In 2007, he co-authored the SPE textbook Streamline Simulation: Theory and Practice, which lays down the foundations of modern streamline simulation technology. In 2012, he was selected by petroleum engineering undergraduate students for the Petroleum Engineering Department Award for Excellence in Teaching.
(Zhu and N.K. Anand)
Ding Zhu joined the faculty in 2004 and is a professor and the holder of the L.F. Peterson ‘36 Professorship in petroleum engineering. She has conducted and supervised research projects in production and well stimulation, and led a project in complex well-performance research. She has been the key researcher for a Texas state-funded project in sandstone acidizing, DOE-funded projects in intelligent well technology and tight gas hydraulic fracturing, a RPSEA-funded project in using temperature data to diagnose fracture treatment, and other industrial funded research projects. Zhu has developed several comprehensive computer software applications for production engineering, many of which have been adopted by industry sponsors. She has also taught numerous short courses on well stimulation, horizontal well technology, and performance improvement. She is an author of over 100 technical papers and two textbooks.
She has received numerous awards from her students, including the SLATE Awards (Student Led Award for Teaching Excellence) in both 2008 and 2009 and the 2011-2012 Association of Former Students College-Level Distinguished Teaching Award. In 2010, she received the SPE Distinguished Achievement for Petroleum Engineering Faculty Award in recognition of her teaching, research, and service. Zhu has also received the 2010-2011 BP Teaching Excellence Award from Texas A&M’s Dwight Look College of Engineering. In 2013, she was recognized by undergraduate students in the department with the Petroleum Engineering Department Award for Excellence in Teaching.
(Maggard and Hill)
Bryan Maggard joined the faculty in 1998. He is currently the undergraduate advisor and a senior lecturer. His undergraduate and graduate teaching areas include engineering fundamentals, numerical methods, gas reservoir engineering, and application and development of numerical reservoir simulation technology. Maggard received his Ph.D. in 2000, his M.S. in 1990, and his B.S. in 1987 in petroleum engineering from Texas A&M. He previously practiced in industry as a production engineer with Pierce Oil & Gas, Inc. in Ft. Worth, Texas, and as a reservoir engineer with Chevron Exploration & Production Services Co., Houston.
Maggard served as a research associate with the department beginning in 1995. His projects included coordination of reservoir simulation efforts for the Bakhilov Field Study as part of the Varyeganneftegaz (VNG) Technical Training Course (1995) and instructor of applied reservoir simulation as part of the PetroVietnam Training Program (1997). In September 2006, he assumed the role of undergraduate advisor. During the ensuing eight years of dramatic growth of the undergraduate population, Maggard has single-handily advised all the resident undergraduate students and has been the point of contact for the thousands of transfer applicants during this period. He continues to advise all 800+ resident undergraduates.