Ali Papi

In 2022, Ali joined the RCCS group at Heriot-Watt University as a PhD student, working on Reactive Transport Phenomena Modelling (RTM) of CCS and H₂ Storage Processes. Interested in software development, after involvement in his MSc thesis, Ali wished he could build on his own software development project. That is why he dug more into this idea and by finding his way through the Energy Transition, he decided to do his PhD on this topic under the supervision of Prof. Mercedes Maroto-Valer. Ali has a multidisciplinary background with 2 MSc degrees and a focused interest in Reservoir Engineering. In 2019, he received a Fully funded Chevening Scholarship to study MSc Petroleum Engineering at Imperial College London. Ali’s social engagements helped him receive this highly reputable scholarship ranking him in the top 3% of worldwide winners among 75,000 participants. He is a pro-energy transition environmentalist and tends to be a social activist. Ali graduated from Imperial with Merit working on the MSc thesis Benchmarking of the Imperial College Finite Element Reservoir Simulator (IC-FERST): Mesh Adaptivity and Parallelisation. IC-FERST is a reservoir simulation software development project at Imperial that seeks to redesign the classical Finite Difference simulation disciplines to a more advanced Finite Element / Finite Volume discipline. Coming from a Chemical Engineering background, for his 1^st master’s in Iran Ali participated in the Chemical Engineering discipline Entrance Examination and got admitted to Chemical Engineering – Hydrocarbon Reservoirs at the Bahonar University of Kerman in 2013. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for him to integrate his Chemical Engineering knowledge into the Subsurface knowledge (from flow in pipes to flow in porous media) through Fluid Mechanics. So, he conducted his MSc thesis on the Simulation of the effect of Diffusion and Natural Convection in Naturally Fractured Reservoirs (NFR’s) in 2016 by coding in MATLAB. Ali completed his BSc in 2013 by studying HSE (Health, Safety and Environmental) Engineering at the Petroleum University of Technology (PUT), Iran, with a fully funded scholarship. This was a programme with Chemical Engineering basics and some elements of Health, Safety and Environment so this was a great opportunity to appreciate the importance of Environmental Engineering too. Ali also has some industrial experiences between 2016 and 2019 such as working for the National Iranian South Oilfields Company (NISOC), the biggest Iranian Energy Company, as a graduate Reservoir Engineer.

PhD Postgraduare Researcher

Reservoir Engineering, Reservoir Simulation, Carbon Capture and Storage, Hydrogen Storage, and Numerical Modelling.