News – Geosystems Engineering and Multiphysics (GEM) Lab

2023

04/27: Dr. Jha receives the Chevron Research Innovation Award for 2023.
03/22: Dr. Jha talks about Repurposing Oil and Gas Legacy Assets for Subsurface Energy and Carbon Storage at the Energy Transition Summit, 2023.
02/06: Dr. Jha receives the NSF CAREER award.

2022

10/12: The drilling simulator has been installed. It will be used for educating undergraduate and graduate students on the subject of drilling of oil, gas, and geothermal wells.

06/18: “A two-grid simulation framework for fast monitoring of fault stability and ground deformation in multiphase geomechanics,” has been published in the Journal of Computational Physics.
05/11: Saro won first place in the SPE Western Regional Student Paper Contest. Congratulations, Saro!
05/06: “Revisiting 2013-2014 Azle seismicity to understand the role of Barnett production on stress propagation and fault stability,” has been published in the Geophysics journal.
03/01: “Thermal and Solubility Effects on Fault Leakage during1 Geologic Carbon Storage”, has been published in the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control.

2021

11/09: Petroleum Technology Luncheon Talk on “Geothermal Reservoir Engineering with a Focus on California’s Geothermal Resources” organized by Society of Petroleum Engineer’s Los Angeles Basin Section
11/08: Xiaoxi’s paper, Diagnostic and predictive analysis of production and injection-induced fault activation, has been published in the International Journal for Numerical and Analytical Methods in Geomechanics
09/21: Minh’s paper, Effect of poroelastic coupling and fracture dynamics on solute transport and geomechanical stability, has been published in Water Resources Research
07/28: Dr. Jha receives SPE 2021 Regional Formation Evaluation Award
07/20: Saro’s paper, Quantification of fault leakage dynamics based on leakage magnitude and dip angle, has been published in the International Journal for Numerical and Analytical Methods in Geomechanics.
07/05: Cyrus’s paper Evaluation of transfer learning in data-driven methods in the assessment of unconventional resources has been published in the Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering
06/25: Saumik has been accepted into Argonne Training Program on Extreme-Scale Computing (ATPESC). Congrats Saumik! This will benefit the development of our in-house coupled multiphysics simulator, PyLith-Flowsim.
06/21: Fangning’s paper, “Geologic CO2 Storage Optimization under Geomechanical Risk Using Coupled-Physics Models” in collaboration with Dr. Behnam Jafarpour, has been published in International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control.
06/15: Alessandra’s paper, Relative contributions of permeability heterogeneity and viscosity contrast on solute mixing, in collaboration with Dr. Felipe de Barros, has been published in Physical Review Fluids.
05/28: Dr. Jha gives an invited talk at the NSF Convergence Workshop, Bringing Land, Ocean, Atmosphere and Ionosphere Data to the Community for Hazard Alerts in the session Environmental Hazards Associated with Energy Exploitation.
04/28: Our work on “Groundwater extraction-induced seismicity around Delhi region, India” in collaboration with the Tectonic Geodesy Lab has been published in Nature Scientific Reports.
03/25: Dr. Jha presents GEM Lab’s work at GeoScience and GeoEnergy Webinars organized jointly by TU Delft and Heriot-Watt universities.
02/25: Congratulations to Minh for receiving departmental and Chevron prizes for his presentation at the Annual MFD Student Research Symposium!
02/08/21: Xiaoxi’s paper, A new coupled multiphase flow-finite strain deformation-fault slip framework for induced seismicity has been published in Journal of Computational Physics.

3D fields of (a) vertical displacement, (b) plastic strain magnitude in the footwall block, and (c) slip magnitude on the fault surface at day 850. (a) shows a cut-away view of the uz field using a slice along the fault surface and a y = 1000 m slice. See videos in the supplementary material.

2020

12/07: We are excited to present our findings on re-purposing California idle wells for the compressed air energy storage (CAES) application at Idle Oil and Gas Wells for Renewable Energy Storage Summit. See the news article.
12/01: Dr. Jha received Orange County Engineering Council’s Outstanding Educator Award (OCEC.org).
11/01: Dr. Saumik Dana has joined our group as a postdoctoral associate. Welcome Saumik!
10/30: Xiaoxi Zhao has successfully defended and submitted her PhD thesis. Congratulations, Dr. Zhao!
09/01: Alessandra’s paper on analytical solution of consolidation-induced transport shows how rock properties like compressibility affect the spreading and mixing of groundwater contaminant plumes.
06/15: Dr. Jha receives the 2020 Western North America Regional Distinguished Achievement Award for Petroleum Engineering Faculty.
01/10: Minh’s paper on coupled transport and geomechanics of viscous fingering shows how fingers affect, and get affected by, stress in the rock.
06/01: Our group receives funding from the National Science Foundation to conduct research on viscosity-enhanced hydrological connectivity.
05/01: Congratulations Xiaoxi for winning the 2nd prize in the PhD level of the 2020 Western Regional SPE Student Paper Contest!
02/10: Dr. Jha gave a talk in the Panel on Environmental Issues and Decarbonization at the SPE North American Student Symposium.

2019

11/18: Dr. Jha gives an invited talk at Machine Learning for Unconventional Resources workshop at the University of Houston.
11/15: Dr. Matthew Weingarten of San Diego State University visits our lab and gives a talk titled “The Evolving Picture of Injection-Induced Seismicity in the U.S. Mid-Continent”.
09/24: Dr. Joachim Moortgat of Ohio State University visits our lab and gives a talk titled “Numerical Modeling of Complex Transport Processes in CO2-EOR and Carbon Sequestration” at the departmental seminar.
08/28: Dr. Jha gives an invited talk at the Department of Petroleum Engineering in the University of North Dakota.
08/19: Ahmed’s paper Coupled Poromechanics-Damage Mechanics Modeling of Fracturing During Injection in Brittle Rocks has been published in the Int. Journal of Numerical Methods in Engineering.
06/07: Xiaoxi’s paper Role of Well Operations and Multiphase Geomechanics in Controlling Fault Stability during CO2 Storage and Enhanced Oil Recovery was published in Journal of Geophysical Research.
05/24: Dr. Jha talks to the students of Mira Costa High School about “Hydraulic fracturing: Current practices, issues, and solutions.”
05/10: Congratulations to Ahmed and Magdalene on receiving their PhD diploma!
04/23-04/26: Minh and Mohammed win 2nd prize in the SPE Student Paper Contest under PhD and Undergraduate categories. Xiaoxi and Abdulrahman present their SPE papers.
04/26: Dr. Jha organizes the session on Unconventional Resources during 2019 Society of Petroleum Engineers Western Regional Meeting.
03/21: We held another successful event for our outreach partner, the John Adams Middle School (JAMS), at USC.

2018

12/15: Renuhaa’s work with our collaborator Dr. Bhaskar Kundu, Seasonal modulation of deep slow-slip and earthquakes on the Main Himalayan Thrust is published in Nature Communications.
12/03: Dr. Jha will offer two courses in Spring: PTE 592 Computational Geomechanics and PTE 599 High-Resolution Simulations of Porous Media Flows.
10/17: Dr. Jha gives two invited lectures at the Whole Value Chain Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) in Golden Colorado.
06/01: Our lab receives a grant from the USC Undergraduate Research Associates Program to support undergraduates working on multiscale geomechanics of hydrocarbon-bearing rocks.
05/21/18: Our outreach work with JAMS is published Building a STEM Future from LA’s Oil History
04/23/18-04/27/18: Saro, Renuhaa, and Abdulrahman present their SPE papers at the Western Regional Meeting.
04/24: Dr. Jha gives the Graduate Seminar talk at the Department of Petroleum Engineering at the Texas A&M University.
04/01: Saro received the Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) award. Congrats Saro!
03/15: Saro is accepted for the Computational Physics Student Summer Workshop at the Los Alamos National Lab. Congrats Saro!
03/12: John Adams Middle School students visit USC and learn about hydraulic fracturing (presented by Dr. Jha and Dr. Manjunath), global warming and carbon sequestration (presented by Dr. Kristian Jessen), oil price fluctuation (presented by JAMS student Jair Delgado), arts at JAMS (presented by JAMS student Erica Cruz), and graduate student life at the USC campus (presented by Dr. Jha).
02/07: Dr. Jha teaches “Pushing Oil through Rocks” to the 8th grade students of the John Adams Middle School in Los Angeles.
01/28: Dr. Jha teaches a primer on Energy and Rocks to the 8th grade students of the John Adams Middle School in Los Angeles.

2017

10/17: Dr. Jha receives the ACS Petroleum Research Fund award to investigate geomechanics of faults in multiphase-flow induced seismicity.
09/13: Dr. Jha gave a seminar at the Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering department of USC.
07/18: Dr. Jha taught an industry short course on Advanced Computational Methods for Reservoir Geomechanics and Induced Seismicity.
05/11: Congratulations Qianru on winning the 2017 Best Teaching Assistant award! Congratulations Renuhaa on winning the 2017 Best Research Assistant award!
06/29: Dr. Jha gave an invited talk at the 2017 Crustal Deformation Modeling Tutorial and Workshop in Golden.
05/03: Dr. Jha received the Rose Hills Foundation Research Fellowship award for his research on induced seismicity.