RAPID Management Team
Eric van Oort
Professor
Richard B. Curran Centennial Chair in Engineering
Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering, Cockrell School of Engineering
Research Areas: Well construction, drilling optimization and automation, remote real-time monitoring, NPT/ILT mitigation, rock-fluid interactions, wellbore geomechanics, drilling fluid design and automation, well integrity and zonal isolation, well plugging and abandonment, geothermal drilling, CCS/CCUS, well repurposing
Mitch Pryor
Senior Research Scientist
Mechanical Engineering, Cockrell School of Engineering robotics.me.utexas.edu
Research Areas: Field and Service Robotics, Grasping and Manipulation, Teleoperation, Haptics, and Wearable Robots, Human-Robot Interaction, Localization, Mapping, and Navigation, Long-Term Autonomy, Motion and Path Planning, Planning, Robot Mechanisms and Design
Pradeep Ashok
Senior Research Scientist
Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering, Cockrell School of Engineering
Research Areas: Pattern recognition, real-time operation centers, decision making, Bayesian analysis, Big Data and data validation
Dongmei “Maggie” Chen
Professor
Mechanical Engineering, Cockrell School of Engineering
Research Areas: Model development and controllers to mitigate undesired drillstring vibrations, modeling of well hydraulics and developing control algorithms for managed pressure drilling, automatic bit forensics analysis, and online drilling fluid monitoring and control. Expanded research in offshore clean energy generation and utilization.
Yifan Zhang
Research Associate
Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering, Cockrell School of Engineering
Research Topic: Drilling Automation and Control, Drillstring Dynamics
Maria Chaudhry
Program Coordinator
Graduate Research Assistants
Santiago Callerio – Ph.D. Student
Petroleum Engineering, Cockrell School of Engineering
Research Topic: Kick tolerance modeling for casing design optimization
Abraham C. Montes – Ph.D Student
Petroleum Engineering, Cockrell School of Engineering
Research Topic: Stuck pipe prediction and analysis is an essential component of fully automated drilling operations that remains an unreached target. My research aims to fill this gap, keeping universality and interpretability as fundamental pillars.
Asad Safarov – Ph.D Student
Petroleum Engineering, Cockrell School of Engineering
Research Topic: My research focuses on analyzing cutter geometries and identifying damages in drill bit cutters, using computer vision and machine learning techniques to improve operational efficiency.
Oscar Roman – Ph.D Student
Petroleum Engineering, Cockrell School of Engineering
Research Topic: RCD failure prediction using condition-based monitoring
Xu Duan – MS Student
Mechanical Engineering, Cockrell School of Engineering
Research Topic: Managed Pressure and Temperature Drilling, Interaction of Hydraulics and Drillstring Dynamics
Myung Sun Park – MS Student
Mechanical Engineering, Cockrell School of Engineering
Research Topic:
Prince Ikpabi – Ph.D Student
Petroleum Engineering, Cockrell School of Engineering
Research Topic: