Faculty Directory

Dr. Baojun Bai

Curators’ Distinguished Professor, Lester Birbeck Endowed Chair Professor, Petroleum Engineering

Research Interests

Water management, conformance control, Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), CO2 EOR and Storage, fluid flow in porous media, and
unconventional oil and gas development.

For additional information regarding Dr. Bai's research, please visit his website, or select here for publications.

Dr. David Borrok

Dean for College of Engineering and Computing, Gulf Oil Foundation Professor, Geology and Geophysics

Research Interests

Water resources, water quality, aqueous geochemistry, petroleum geochemistry, and geomicrobiology.

For additional information regarding Dr. Borrok's research, please select here.

Mr. David Carpenter

Associate Teaching Professor, Petroleum Engineering

Academic Interests

Drilling, Completions, Production, EOR, Reservoir Management, Economics, Reviving old oil & gas fields, Artificial Lift, Carbon Capture & Storage

Dr. Rishabh Dutta

Assistant Research Professor

Academic Interests

Satellite geodetic techniques, tectonics and earthquake cycle, crustal deformation, inverse problems and modeling, uncertainty quantification.

For additional information regarding Dr. Dutta's research, please visit his website, or select here for publications.

Dr. Andreas Eckert

Associate Professor, Petroleum Engineering/Geology and Geophysics

Research Interests

Numerical simulation of buckle folding, numerical simulation of rock fabric evolution, fracture initiation, salt tectonics, deformation bands, and wellbore and reservoir geomechanics. 

For more information regarding Dr. Eckert's research, please visit his website, or select here for publications.

Dr. Stephen Gao

Department Chair, Professor, Geology and Geophysics/Geological Engineering

Research Interests

Theoretical and applied geophysics, structure and dynamics of the Earth's crust and mantle, earthquakes, seismic anisotropy, and receiver function analysis.

For additional information regarding Dr. Gao's research, please visit his website or select here for publications.

Dr. Leslie Gertsch

Associate Professor, Geological Engineering

Research Interests

Sustainably producing the natural resources of space, which will reduce launch costs.  In time, mining in space will reduce human impact on Earth's environment and increase the chance that humanity will survive catastrophes, such as nuclear war or asteroid impact.  Additionally, the coupled hydromechanical behavior of fractured rock.  Rock cracks and changes shape when it is put under load, and this changes how rapidly groundwater, petroleum, etc. can move through it.  The presence of water and other fluids also changes how easily rock can be excavated for foundations, tunnels, etc.

For additional information regarding Dr. Gertsch's research, please select here for publications.

Dr. Weibing Gong

Assistant Professor, Geological Engineering

Research Interests

Climate change-related and seismic hazards, infrastructure resilience against natural hazards, applications of remote sensing and AI in geological (geotechnical) engineering, and carbon detection and capture.

For additional information regarding Dr. Gong's research, please select here for publications and here for his lab website.

Dr. Katherine Grote

Associate Professor, Geological Engineering

Research Interests

Groundwater and near surface geophysics, specifically in applying these techniques to promote sustainable agriculture and environmental protection.

For additional information regarding Dr. Grote's research, please select here for publications.

Dr. John Hogan

Associate Professor, Geology and Geophysics/Petroleum Engineering

Research Interests

Structural geology - folding and faulting; igneous petrology - granite petrogenesis and textural development; tectonics - extensional regimes; and significance of sub-horizontal topographic surfaces.

For additional information regarding Dr. Hogan's research, please see his website, or select here for publications.

Dr. Kelly Liu

Professor, Geology and Geophysics/Petroleum Engineering

Research Interests

Earthquakes and exploration seismology, seismic data processing and interpretation, and applied geophysics.

For additional information regarding Dr. Liu's research, please see her website, or select here for publications.

Dr. Jeremy Maurer

Assistant Professor, Geological Engineering/Geology and Geophysics

Research Interests

Geodesy, earthquake and fault mechanics, induced seismicity, inverse problems and modeling, uncertainty quantification, crustal deformation, and geophysical methods.

For more information regarding Dr. Maurer's research, please visit his website, or select here for publications.

Dr. Francisca Oboh-Ikuenobe

Professor, Geology and Geophysics

Research Interests

Palynology, biostratigraphy, sedimentology, sequence stratigraphy, and paleoclimatology.

For additional information regarding Dr. Oboh-Ikuenobe, please see her website, or select here for publications.

Dr. Jonathan Obrist Farner

Associate Professor, Geology and Geophysics/Petroleum Engineering

Research Interests

Sedimentology, stratigraphy, basin analysis, petroleum geology, and paleolimnology.

For additional information regarding Dr. Obrist-Farner's research, please see his website, or select here for publications.

Dr. Mingzhen Wei

Associate Professor, Petroleum Engineering

Research Interests

Reservoir simulation, data mining, unconventional resources, and enhanced oil recovery.

For additional information regarding Dr. Wei's research, please see her website, or select here for publications.

Dr. Wan Yang

Professor, Geology and Geophysics/Petroleum Engineering

Research Interests

Shallow marine, marginal marine, and non-marine sedimentary processes; depositional environments; and petrology (carbonate and siliciclastic, modern and ancient, outcrop and subsurface).

For additional information regarding Dr. Yang's research, please see his website, or select here for publications.

Affiliated and Adjunct Faculty

(not available as graduate advisors)

Professor Larry Britt
Research Interests

Hydraulic fracturing, fracture diagnostics and unconventional resources.

For additional information regarding Professor Britt's research, please select here for his publications.

 

Mr. Lee Bunch

Instructor, Geological Engineering

Research Interests

UAV remote sensing, karst hydrology, and hydroinformatics.

Mr. Kyle Ganz

Adjunct Professor

Research Interests

Stratigraphy, Geologic Mapping, Ore Deposits, Mineralogy, Missouri Geology

Dr. Daoru Han

Associate Professor, Aerospace Engineering and Geological Engineering

Research Interests

Plasma aerospace applications; Space propulsion; Plasma-material interactions; Plasma physics and rarefied gas dynamics; High-performance computing

For additional information regarding Dr. Han's research, please see his website, or select here for publications.

Dr. Melanie Mormile

Professor, Biological Science, Geological Sciences & Engineering, Chair Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC)

Research Interests

Environmental Microbiology, Extremophilic Microorganisms, and Anaerobic Microbial Metabolism.

For additional information regarding Dr. Mormile's research, please visit her website.

Perrin Roller

Adjunct Professor

Dr. Cheryl Seeger

Lecturer, Geology and Geophysics

Mr. David Smith

President and Principal Advisor, Oilfield Conformance Consulting LLC. Adjunct Professor, Petroleum Engineering

Research Interests

For more information regarding Mr. Smith's research, please read his bio.

Emeritus Faculty

Dr. Neil Anderson

Professor Emeritus, Geological Engineering

Dr. Jeffrey Cawlfield

Professor, Geological Engineering

Research Interests

For information regarding Dr. Cawlfield's research, please visit his website, or select here for publications.

Dr. Shari Dunn-Norman

Chancellor's Professor Emeritus, Petroleum Engineering

Research Interests

Hydraulic fracturing, wellbore construction, well integrity, production engineering and artificial lift. 

For additional information regarding Dr. Dunn-Norman's research, please select here for publications.

Dr. Curt Elmore

Professor Emeritus, Geological Engineering

Dr. Ralph Flori

Chancellor's Professor Emeritus, Petroleum Engineering

Dr. Richard Hagni

Curators' Professor Emeritus, Geology

Dr. Robert Laudon

Professor Emeritus, Geology

Dr. Norbert Maerz

Professor Emeritus, Geological Engineering

Dr. J. David Rogers

Hasselmann Professor, Geological Engineering

Research Interests

Geographic information systems, seismic hazards in the midwest, seismically induced landslides, composite landslides, and sturzstroms and sackungen failures.

For additional information regarding Dr. Rogers's research, please see his website, or select here for publications.