Graduate students

Kyung-won Chang (PhD candidate, GEO)

Kyung-won is studying basin-scale fluid flows in porous media, especially behavior of injected CO₂. He is trying to understand the mechanisms of CO₂ leakage in the geological formations by creating his own models as well as performing experiments. He is reminding himself "seemingly simple things never go simply" all the time.

Nicolas Huerta (PhD student, GEO)

Nicolas is interested in understanding the reactive fluid transport within a fracture under confining stress. One specific application of his work is to characterize the time-dependent leakage flux up a wellbore with a conductive defect at the cement-to-earth interface. He is using a combination of laboratory experiments and numerical models to characterize key phenomena to determine the conditions under which the pathway is self-sealing and self-reinforcing.

Abraham Taicher (PhD student, CSEM)

Abraham is a CSEM student with a strong background in numerical and applied mathematics. He is interested in developing Mixed Finite Element methods to problems in porous media and fluid mechanics. He focuses on studying the Darcy-Stokes equations that govern convection and partial melting in planetary interiors.

Kiran Sathaye (PhD student, GEO)

Kiran has just joined the group, he is interested in multiphase flow in porous media and reservoir simulation. He will work on the evolution of natural CO₂ reservoirs as part of the DOE funded Center For Subsurface Energy Security (CFSES).

Research assistants

Jake Jordan

Jake's research interests lie in the areas of computational fluid mechanics, scientific computing and applied maths.

Undergraduate students

Quin Wenning (GEO 2012)

Quinn is working with Nic Huerta on characterizing flow paths in fractured well bores.

Former students

Jennifer Cessna (MS 2011, GEO)

Jennifer worked on unstable reaction fronts in porous media. The images for the reactive flow class on the teaching page are from her thesis.