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Established in 1957, the Distinguished Engineering Graduate Award is the highest honor that the Cockrell School bestows on its alumni. The five distinguished engineering graduates for 2017 are innovators, entrepreneurs and highly respected leaders in their industries and communities. UT PGE graduate Eugene “Gene” B. Shepherd, Jr., is included in this year's class of honorees.

Shepherd is a founder and the chief executive officer of ATX Energy Partners LLC. Prior to that, Shepherd was a founder and chief executive officer of Brigham Resources LLC from 2013 until its sale to Diamondback Energy Inc. in early 2017.  

Shepherd earned his bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering in 1981 and his MBA in 1986, both from The University of Texas at Austin.

Shepherd had 20 years of financial and operational experience in the energy industry before serving as chief financial officer of Brigham Exploration from 2002 until its sale to Norway-based Statoil ASA in 2011. Earlier in his career, he served as integrated energy managing director for the investment banking division of ABN AMRO Bank, where he executed merger and acquisition advisory services and capital markets transactions for energy companies. He had a similar focus in his role at Prudential Securities Incorporated, Stephens Inc. and Merrill Lynch Capital Markets. Prior to his stint in the financial services industry, he worked for more than four years as a petroleum engineer for Amoco Production Company and the Railroad Commission of Texas.

Shepherd received the 2016 Adam-Houston Energy Network M&A Dealmaker of the Year award for the sale of Brigham Resources’ southern Delaware Basin assets to Diamondback Energy. In 2017, Shepherd was awarded the Silver Beaver award by the Boy Scouts of America for distinguished service to youth.

Shepherd is active in his church and community. He is a member of the Engineering Advisory Board of the Cockrell School of Engineering and has served on various nonprofit boards, including KIPP Austin Public Schools, the Capital Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America and Trinity Center. 

Shepherd lives in Austin with his wife, Robin, and their three sons, Trey, Sam and Ben.

Professor Carlos Torres-Verdin is the recipient of two prestigious international awards. Torres-Verdin is receiving the European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers (EAGE) Conrad Schlumberger Award as well as the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) is awarding Torres-Verdin with the organization’s second highest award - Honorary Membership.

The Conrad Schlumberger Award is presented to a member of EAGE who has made an outstanding contribution over a period of time to the scientific and technical advancement of the geosciences, particularly geophysics. Torres-Verdin has been a highly accomplished professor and innovator throughout his career. He has co-authored 5 U.S. patents, he has published more than 180 articles in refereed technical journals and over 205 articles in international conferences. He joined the UT Austin faculty in 1999.

EAGE President Chris Ward and Vice-President Jean-Jacques Biteau will present the award to Torres-Verdin during the opening session of the 79th EAGE Conference & Exhibition, to be held at the Paris expo, Porte de Versailles, in Paris on June 12, 2017.

As the first UT PGE professor to receive Honorary Membership from SEG, which currently has 27,000 members, the honor requires unanimous approval by the Honors and Awards committee and the Board of Directors of the SEG. The award is bestowed to SEG members who have made distinguished contributions, which warrants exceptional recognition, to exploration geophysics or a related field or to the advancement of the profession of exploration geophysics through service to the Society.

Torres-Verdin will receive the award during the SEG’s annual meeting on Sept. 24-29, 2017 in Houston, Texas.

UT PGE assistant professor John T. Foster and a team of researchers have developed a more sophisticated hydraulic fracturing model to simulate complex fracture networks.

Through the knowledge and leadership skills developed at UT Austin, Himchand Persad is changing the lives of children in his native home of Trinidad and Tobago.

UT PGE remains the No. 1 graduate program in petroleum engineering.

As with many fields, computing is changing how geologists and engineers conduct their research.

UT PGE students swept the 2017 Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Southwest Regional Paper Contest. The competition was hosted by Encana Corporation on Feb. 1 in Denver. More than 14 undergraduate, master’s and Ph.D. students from four universities in the Southwest region took part in the paper contest.

Paper contest participants presented their innovative findings from a research project or internship to judges, who are experts in the field. The students were critiqued on the following three areas: subject matter, delivery and clarity of communication.

In addition to placing in the top spot in all three divisions (B.S., M.S. and Ph.D.), UT PGE students also swept second place:

Undergraduate Division

• 1st – William Dubois  
• 2nd – Syed Zeerak Abbas Abdi

Master’s Division

• 1st – Nkemakonam Egboga
• 2nd – Vivek Ravi

Ph.D. Division

• 1st – Ali Abouie
• 2nd – Mohsen Babazadeh

The top place finisher in each category will travel to San Antonio, Texas this Oct. 9-11 to compete in the international paper contest at the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition (ATCE). UT PGE students will go up against the impressive qualifiers from the other 13 regional divisions. This is the sixth consecutive year at least one UT PGE student won the regional competition and went to the international contest.

The UT System Board of Regents committed $100 million in Permanent University Fund (PUF) bond proceeds to support the construction of an energy engineering building in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. The building is the next in the Cockrell School’s master facility plan and will be focused on energy-related education and research.

Before construction can begin, two additional levels of approval from the Regents will be required, and the school will also need to secure $50 million in philanthropic support.

“I am grateful to the Board of Regents for their support of this important facility and their commitment to our extraordinary Texas Engineering faculty and students,” said Cockrell School Dean Sharon L. Wood. “The energy engineering building is a critical step in ensuring the university’s continued leadership in energy education and research.”

The vote by the Board of Regents allows the school to begin formal planning and programming for the building. The first step will be to work with UT Austin and UT System personnel to select a design firm.

Statoil, an international energy company based in Norway, has signed a $2.5 million partnership renewal agreement to support graduate student research focused on geology, geophysics and petroleum engineering at The University of Texas at Austin.

Recognizing the oil and gas industry was entering a period of data disruption, Dr. Eric van Oort had the vision to launch a state-of-the-art real-time operations center (RTOC) at UT PGE in 2012. Now, the industry is looking at the enormous amount of data flowing in by the second from its rigs to optimize drilling performance.