One of the primary reasons Penn State is recognized around the globe as a distinguished university is the sterling caliber of its faculty. As a World Campus student, you will enjoy the opportunity to learn from the same instructors who teach traditional face-to-face classes on Penn State's main campus.
In addition, Penn State's oil and gas engineering management faculty are all seasoned veterans of the business sector, bringing extensive real world experience to the degree program.
Professor Michael Adewumi, Ph.D.
Michael Adewumi is professor and chair of the graduate program in petroleum and natural gas engineering at Penn State, where he has been teaching and conducting research for 18 years. He is also the Wood Faculty Fellow in petroleum and natural gas engineering at Penn State. His research interests and expertise are in the areas of natural gas engineering, the phase behavior of natural gas and condensate systems, multiphase flow in pipelines, drilling hydraulics modeling, environmental remediation processes, and near-wellbore phenomena.
Professor Adewumi has supervised many doctoral and master's theses, and currently supervises many graduate students. He teaches advanced fluid flow courses on flow through porous media, natural gas engineering, phase behavior, contaminant transport, and production process engineering. Earlier he was a research fellow for 5 years at the world-renowned Institute of Gas Technology in Chicago, where he conducted research on natural gas engineering, phase behavior, multiphase hydrodynamic flow in pipelines, and process modeling. He has significant industrial experience in the oil and gas industry.
An internationally recognized expert in natural gas engineering, multiphase flow, and phase behavior, he has conducted significant research for the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, Gas Research Institute, and Engineering Foundation, as well as major oil companies and independents. He has also performed extensive consulting services for the major oil and gas companies, including Mobil, Amoco, Texaco, Transwestern, Enron, CNG, and Dominion.
He has authored or co-authored more than 100 technical articles on various aspects of natural gas engineering and petroleum production engineering. He has co-authored a book and is working on several more. Professor Adewumi has recently been named director of Penn State's Alliance for Earth Sciences, Engineering, and Development in Africa (AESEDA).
Professor Turgay Ertekin, Ph.D.
Turgay Ertekin has had extensive experience with the development and application of fluid flow models in porous media. He has been deeply involved in the mathematical modeling of flow problems, using various techniques, for more than 30 years. He has taught courses in fluid flow dynamics in porous media and reservoir simulation at the graduate and undergraduate levels and has directed the research work of graduate students on reservoir modeling and reservoir engineering.
His research efforts with graduate students have produced 23 doctoral and 47 master's theses. His current research deals with the flow of gases in tight formations, the coal seam degasification process, well test analysis for composite reservoirs, enhanced oil recovery techniques, and artificial neural network applications in petroleum and natural gas engineering.
Professor Ertekin has given more than 125 invited lectures, paper presentations, and seminars and more than 20 workshops and short courses throughout the world, and has authored or co-authored more than 150 publications, including 4 books and 4 book chapters. He has served in various positions on the Society of Petroleum Engineers' editorial board, including a two-year term as the executive editor of the Formation Evaluation Journal.
Professor Avrami Grader, Ph.D.
Dr. Avrami Grader has been a faculty member in petroleum and natural gas engineering at Penn State since 1987. He was a faculty member at Stanford University for 4 years before joining Penn State. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in reservoir engineering.
His research areas include transient pressure and tracer testing, wellbore hydraulics and near-wellbore domain modeling, water flooding, experimental and theoretical studies of 2- and 3-phase displacement processes, multiphase fluid flow in fractures and matrix interactions, countercurrent flow processes, diffusion in porous media, and groundwater hydrology. Dr. Grader is the director of the Center for Quantitative Imaging, an advanced X-ray tomography and imaging facility serving the entire scientific community.
Associate Professor Phillip Halleck, Ph.D.
Dr. Phillip Halleck has been associate professor of petroleum and natural gas engineering for 12 years, following service in the Geosciences Department. He has a bachelor's degree in chemistry from the University of Rochester and a doctorate in geophysics from the University of Chicago. He has 30 years of experience in geotechnical research through positions at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Schlumberger, and TerraTek.
Dr. Halleck teaches undergraduate courses in well logging, as well as General Education courses covering energy, minerals, and environmental topics. He performs research using X-ray CT to monitor the flow process in porous rocks and unconsolidated materials. He has numerous publications in a wide range of research areas and co-advises several graduate students.
Associate Professor Robert W. Watson, Ph.D.
Robert Watson is an associate professor and undergraduate program officer in petroleum and natural gas engineering at the Penn State, where he has been teaching and conducting research for 25 years. His research interests focus on drilling and production technology, and environmental remediation processes. Professor Watson has conducted research for the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Defense, and Gas Research Institute.
His current projects include research in the use of non-reagent-grade nitrogen for underbalanced drilling applications and reservoir stimulation, new techniques for producing marginal oil wells, and the application of acoustics to remediating near-wellbore damage. Moreover, Professor Watson is active in developing industry consortia that undertake research supporting the nation's marginal oil wells and underground natural gas storage.
He teaches drilling engineering and petroleum engineering design. He has more than 13 years of industrial experience in the oil and gas industry and is a registered Professional Engineer. His consulting activities have included work with the National Fuel Gas Supply Corporation, Dominion Resources, and Weatherford. Professor Watson currently serves on the Technical Advisory Board of Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection.
Associate Professor M. Thaddeus Ityokumbul, Ph.D.
Thaddeus Ityokumbul has been on the faculty in energy and geo-environmental engineering at Penn State since 1992. His research has focused on the use of bubble and slurry bubble column reactors in oil and mineral flotation, and the use of sonication technology for enhanced recovery of oil and subsurface remediation of contaminated sites. Professor Ityokumbul has developed novel approaches to the optimal design and scale-up of slurry and bubble column reactors.
His research has been supported by the Engineering Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, Chevron, and other public agencies. Professor Ityokumbul teaches pollution control courses, including a capstone design course for the environmental systems engineering major that requires students to integrate their educational experiences to solve a major environmental problem. His open-book examination style lends itself to Web-based learning in which students are required to demonstrate a good understanding of the subject matter.
Associate Professor Semih Eser, Ph.D.
Semih Eser, associate head of the Department of Energy and Geo-Environmental Engineering, received his B.S. (1976) and M.S. (1978) degrees in chemical engineering from Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, and his Ph.D. (1986) in fuel science from Penn State. He has been teaching and conducting research at Penn State since 1988.
His principal research areas include petroleum refining processes, molecular characterization of heavy petroleum feedstocks, chemistry and kinetics of mesophase development in delayed coking for needle coke production, and inhibition of carbonaceous deposit formation on metal surfaces in petroleum processing units and combustion engines. He has published 50 papers, 3 book chapters, and given over 100 presentations at conferences, lectures, and seminars.
Eser teaches courses on petroleum processing, problems in fuel science, energy and society, energy and the environment, and minerals and society. Eser served as the director of the Laboratory for Hydrocarbon Process Chemistry at the Penn State Energy Institute from 1998 to 2000. He currently coordinates research on carbon materials at the institute. He also served as the 2004 program chair for the Fuel Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society.
