Dr. Akhil Datta-Gupta, Regents Professor in the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University and holder of the L. F. Peterson '36 Endowed Chair in Petroleum Engineering, has been appointed a University Distinguished Professor, one of the highest honors awarded to Texas A&M faculty members. Datta-Gupta was one of three professors honored with the title, which is bestowed in perpetuity.
The designation of distinguished professor denotes a faculty member who is preeminent in his or her field, has made at least one seminal contribution to the discipline and whose work is central in any narrative of the field and is widely recognized to have changed the direction of scholarship in the field. More than 85 current faculty members hold this prestigious title.
“University Distinguished Professors represent the highest level of achievement for our faculty,” said Dr. Karan L. Watson, provost and executive vice president. “They are recognized as pre-eminent scholars in their fields and their accomplishments are exemplified by seminal contributions to their respective disciplines. They demonstrate to the world the high quality of scholarship underway at Texas A&M University.”
Datta-Gupta joined the faculty of the college of engineering in 1994 after working for BP Exploration/Research and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He earned his Ph.D. in petroleum engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.
Datta-Gupta was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering “for developing the theory and practice of streamline simulation for fluid flow in heterogeneous reservoirs.” Three-dimensional streamline simulation is widely considered as one of the major developments in petroleum reservoir modeling and performance forecasting in the last two decades. The technology has been rapidly assimilated by the industry for highly detailed flow simulation, reservoir management, geologic model calibration and uncertainty assessment. Several commercial reservoir simulators have been developed based on his streamline ‘time of flight’ concept.
“Professor Datta-Gupta’s foundational work on streamline simulation has created an entire new area of reservoir engineering and has established him as a prominent scholar in petroleum engineering,” said Dr. Dan Hill, head of the petroleum engineering department. “His selection as a Texas A&M University Distinguished Professor is a fitting recognition of Professor Datta-Gupta’s stature.”
Among his many awards, Datta-Gupta has received the Carll Award and the Uren Award, two of the top three technical awards given by the Society of Petroleum Engineers, and was elected to the Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science. He has coauthored the textbook Streamline Simulation: Theory and Practice, which set forth the foundations of modern streamline simulation technology. His second book, Subsurface Fluid Flow and Imaging, is scheduled for publication by the Cambridge University Press in early 2016.
Datta-Gupta is a registered professional engineer in the State of Texas and consults for oil and gas companies worldwide.
Texas A&M President Michael K. Young and the Texas A&M Foundation will host a reception on April 27 recognizing the three new university distinguished professors and honoring all of the University Distinguished Professors. More information, including a complete list of University Distinguished Professors, is available online at http://dof.tamu.edu/Awards-and-Honors/UNIVERSITY-DISTINGUISHED-PROFESSOR.