The University of Tulsa's Petroleum Engineering Department

Dr. Erdal Ozkan has B.S. and M.S. degrees from Istanbul Technical University and a Ph.D. degree from The University of Tulsa in Petroleum Engineering. Since 1989, he has taught at Istanbul Technical University and Colorado School of Mines, where he is currently a Professor of Petroleum Engineering and co-Director of the Marathon Center of Excellence for Reservoir Studies. His main research interests are reservoir engineering, horizontal and multilateral well technology, well test analysis, and fluid flow in porous media. He has published and presented extensively in refereed journals and technical meetings and co-authored a book. Dr. Ozkan has also conducted many industry supported research projects and presented short courses to the industry around the world. He has served as the Executive Editor of SPE Reservoir Evaluation and Engineering and is currently the co-Editor in Chief of Elsevier B.V. Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering. He was also the organizer of several SPE forums, workshops, and conferences.

Erdal Ozkan in his own words:

Why did you choose TU?

When I applied to TU in 1983, I was on a Turkish Government scholarship and I wanted to go to one of the top petroleum engineering schools to make the best out of my scholarship. As it is today, in 1983, TU was one of the best known universities in petroleum engineering and it was a natural choice. When I received the acceptance letter from TU, I dropped all my other applications.

Did TU prepare you well for your career?

In the past 20 years since I received my PhD from TU, I have never thought that I could have had better preparation in anything I wanted to do in my professional life.

Any fond memories you would like to share?

Our well-testing and simulation group had informal student presentations every Friday afternoon. After the presentation, we had an informal party to continue our discussions. These presentations and discussions were an important part of my education at TU. I still miss the satisfaction I got from from these discussions.