Scott Hickman (Flow Assurance)
ExxonMobil Upstream Research CompanyScott Hickman is a flow assurance subject matter expert at ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company primarily focusing on research in the areas of wax and asphaltenes. Scott received his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Prior to joining ExxonMobil, Scott spent three years in academia on a joint appointment between Murray State and the University of Kentucky where he investigated transitory combustion through numerical methods. Upon joining the Flow Assurance Group at ExxonMobil in 2001, Scott was responsible for the wax research effort which included both modeling and experimental efforts. This included progressing the ExxonMobil Fluid Properties Laboratory. During this time he expanded his research and experimental capabilities at ExxonMobil to include asphaltenes and emulsions. From 2010 to 2013 Scott served as the Flow Assurance Team Lead for the ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company. Scott has had assignments outside of research in the upstream areas of design and production. Scott’s last assignment outside flow assurance was in heavy oil research at Imperial Oil in Calgary where he served as Imperial Oil’s coordinator for the Institute of Oil Sands Innovation – a research collaboration between Imperial Oil, Provincial Government and universities managed through the University of Alberta. Scott has mentored engineers in the area of flow assurance, and consistent with his academic background was one of the major developers for ExxonMobil’s flow assurance school.
Michael Moir (Petroleum Chemistry)
ChevronMichael Moir is the manager of the Petroleum and Materials Characterization Unit of the Chevron Energy Technology Company in Richmond, California. Michael obtained his B.Sc. in chemistry from Queen’s University at Kingston, Ontario, Canada and his Ph.D. in physical organic chemistry from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He worked for 11 years in the research department of Imperial Oil Resources Limited in Calgary, Alberta before joining Chevron in 1996. He has made contributions in a diverse range of research pursuits, from organic geochronology to remediation of crude oil impacted sites, and now leads a group of about 60 scientists and technicians dedicated to the understanding of the physical and chemical nature of crude oil and its products. Michael has contributed to more than 50 publications and he has been awarded 16 U.S. Patents. Michael currently enjoys the challenge of uncovering the truth about asphaltene aggregation in collaboration with his Chevron colleagues and academic and industrial partners.
Erich Muller (Petroleum Properties)
Imperial College LondonErich A. Müller has over 30 years of accumulated experience in the molecular description of complex fluids and interfaces with particular application to bridging gaps between detailed molecular studies and industrial applications. He is a Professor in Thermodynamicsat the department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and an Adjunct Professor at North Carolina State University. His research interests are in the molecular simulation of complex fluid thermodynamics (liquid crystals, asphaltenes, polymers), adsorption on nanoporous materials (gases on activated carbons and nanotubes), interfacial phenomena (vapour-liquid equilibria and surface tensions). His recent work on the development of the SAFT force field has garnered over 900 citations in the past 5 years. Using this force field, his group won the most recent international industrial fluids property simulation challenge, taking coarse grained models to a level accuracy and predictability which exceed conventional atomistic models.
Andrew Pomerantz (Shale Oil & Gas)
Schlumberger-Doll ResearchAndrew E. Pomerantz is the Geochemistry Program Manager at Schlumberger-Doll Research. His research focuses on the development of novel techniques to characterize the chemical composition of kerogen and asphaltenes, including methods in mass spectrometry and X-ray spectroscopy. That molecular information is used to understand fundamental physical and chemical processes such as petroleum generation, storage and transport in shales, and asphaltene compositional grading. He graduated from Stanford University with a PhD in chemistry in 2005 and has co-authored 80 peer-reviewed publications and 20 granted US patents.
Hongbo Zeng (Emulsions)
University of AlbertaDr. Hongbo Zeng is a Professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Alberta, and holds a Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Intermolecular Forces and Interfacial Science. He received his BSc and MSc degrees at Tsinghua University and obtained his PhD at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Zeng’s research interests are in colloid and interface science, functional materials & nanotechnology, with a special focus on intermolecular and surface interactions in soft material systems (e.g., polymers, biopolymers, surfactants, emulsions) and engineering processes (e.g., bitumen extraction, flotation, oil/water separation, tailings water treatment), and development of functional materials. His lab has developed and applied various nanomechanical tools and methodologies to probe the intermolecular and interfacial forces at solid/water/oil/gas interfaces and between highly deformable objects such as gas bubbles and liquid emulsion drops. He has published over 175 refereed research articles in top journals and 7 book chapters, edited a book “Polymer Adhesion, Friction and Lubrication” (Wiley), and holds 9 patents (6 granted and 3 pending). Dr. Zeng received the Peebles Award of the Adhesion Society (2007), Materials Research Society (MRS) Graduate Research Award (Silver Medal) (2007), Petro-Canada Young Innovator Award (2013), Martha Cook Piper Research Prize (2016), and The Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering Lectureship Award (2016).