Hisham Nasr-El-Din, an SPE Distinguished Member, professor, and scholar in stimulation and oilfield chemistry, died 3 July.
Nasr-El-Din was a professor and holder of the John Edgar Holt Endowed Chair at Texas A&M University (TAMU) in petroleum engineering. Previously, he was principal professional and team leader of the Stimulation Research and Technology team at Saudi Aramco for 15 years. Before joining Saudi Aramco, he worked for 4 years as a staff research engineer with the Petroleum Recovery Institute in Calgary and as a research associate in the Canadian universities of Saskatchewan, Ottawa, and Alberta. He received numerous awards during his time at Saudi Aramco for his contributions in stimulation and treatment-fluid technologies and stimulation design, and for training and mentoring other professionals.
A scholar in many petroleum disciplines, Nasr-El-Din’s research interests included well stimulation, formation damage, enhanced oil recovery, conformance control, interfacial properties, adsorption, rheology, cementing, drilling fluids, two-phase flow, and nondamaging fluid technologies. He held more than 30 patents on his work, wrote 17 book chapters, and published and presented more than 720 technical papers.
Nasr-El-Din was a distinguished academician whose work was widely referenced and a mentor and guide to many students and professionals over the years. He maintained eight research laboratories at TAMU and had 20 to 40 student researchers per year. At the time of his passing, he was guiding 22 graduate students and collaborating with many researchers working on his projects. He was the recipient of the SPE Distinguished Achievement Award for Petroleum Engineering Faculty in 2013 and the Excellence in Research Faculty Award from TAMU’s Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering in 2015. An approachable, beloved mentor who empowered his students with professional skills, he trained many students in teaching at the university and industry level, leveraging his years of industry experience to their benefit. For this work, he was awarded the Student Employment Impact Award by TAMU in 2017.
A permanent fixture in the SPE academic circles, Nasr-El-Din made significant contributions to the industry’s technical literature through his technical papers, and was a life-long champion and member of the editorial review boards of several SPE peer-reviewed journals. He received numerous awards recognizing his expertise and involvement with the journals. He was a review chairperson for SPE Journal, and a technical editor for SPE Production and Operations and SPE Drilling and Completions. He received two SPE Outstanding Associate Editor awards and an SPE Outstanding Technical Editor Award, and in 2011 achieved the “A Peer Apart” status for reviewing more than 100 papers. He was honored with SPE Distinguished Membership in 2007 and received the regional and international SPE Production and Operations Award in 2006 and 2009, respectively. He was regularly invited to give keynote presentations in various SPE and National Association of Corrosion Engineers conferences.
Nasr-El-Din was announced the recipient of the Anthony F. Lucas Gold Medal for 2020, which honors distinguished achievement in the identification and development of new technology and concepts that will enhance the process of finding and producing petroleum. He will be presented the award posthumously at the 2020 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition. He held a master’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Cairo and a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Saskatchewan.