Dr. Clint Aichele

Clint Aichele, Ph.D., is a distinguished professor and researcher specializing in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. He holds a Ph.D. from Rice University and a B.S. from Oklahoma State University. His research focuses on interfacial phenomena, emulsion stability, flow assurance, separations, and reservoir wettability alteration. With innovative techniques and advanced equipment, Dr. Aichele explores solids partitioning at interfaces, the role of nanoparticles in emulsions, hydrate formation dynamics, and strategies for hydrocarbon recovery. His work has broad applications across energy, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, and environmental sustainability, making significant contributions to the field of chemical engineering.

Dr. Prem Bikkina

Dr. Prem Bikkina serves as an Associate Professor, Harold Courson Chair, and Petroleum Program Director at Oklahoma State University. He earned his B.S. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering from NIT Warangal and IIT Guwahati, respectively, followed by a Ph.D. in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Tulsa and a postdoctoral fellowship at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Dr. Bikkina's research focuses on Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS), wettability-based dissolved gas separation and nucleate boiling, as well as ML/AI applications for CO₂-EOR and CCUS. His work has led to numerous high-impact journal publications, patents, and significant funding from diverse sources.

He is an Associate Editor for Petroleum Science and Technology and has extensive experience as a peer reviewer for journals and funding agencies. Dr. Bikkina has received several prestigious awards, including the 2024 Outstanding Graduate Faculty Award, the 2024 CEAT Excellent Scholar Award, the 2019 CEAT Excellent Teacher Award, the 2017 SPE Regional Distinguished Achievement Award for Petroleum Engineering Faculty, and the 2016 SPE Mid-Continent Regional Service Award. He is an active member of multiple professional organizations.

Learn more about Dr. Bikkina on his LinkedIn profile.

Dr. Xiaofeng Chen

Dr. Xiaofeng Chen is an Assistant Professor at the Boone Pickens School of Geology at Oklahoma State University. He earned his Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Oklahoma in 2015, preceded by a Master’s in Material Engineering from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China, and a Bachelor’s in Material Science from Fudan University in Shanghai, China. He pursued postdoctoral research in fracture mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin from 2015 to 2018. Prior to his current role, Chen held positions as a Research Specialist and Scientist at Texas A&M University (2019–2024) and Research Associate at the University of Oklahoma (2018–2019). His expertise lies in dynamic fault weakening, fracture mechanics, and reservoir seal integrity. Chen has published extensively in high-impact journals, contributing groundbreaking research on fault asperity failure, subsurface applications, and fracture behavior. Beyond his research, he is an experienced educator, teaching courses on geology and experimental rock deformation across multiple institutions. He is an active member of the American Geophysical Union and serves as a reviewer for leading scientific journals. Chen’s work bridges the gap between experimental and theoretical studies, advancing understanding in geology and material science.

Muhammad Jujuly

Professor Jujuly is a professional engineer with over a decade of experience spanning academia, research, and industry. Currently serving as a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Fire Protection and Safety Technology (FPST) program at Oklahoma State University's College of Engineering, Architecture, and Technology (CEAT), he specializes in process safety, fire modeling, computational modeling, and probabilistic risk assessment. Prior to joining OSU, Professor Jujuly was a Senior Instructor II at Cape Breton University, where he taught core engineering courses and supervised capstone projects focusing on gas transmission pipeline integrity and reliability engineering.

He has extensive industrial experience, including serving as a Technical Lead in Risk Modeling at JANA Corporation, where he developed advanced risk models for the gas transmission pipeline. The work involved performing integrity assessments, consequence analyses, and failure probability modeling. In previous roles, Professor Jujuly led research projects at Memorial University's Centre for Risk, Integrity, and Safety Engineering (C-RISE), where they developed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models for subsea pipeline leak detection and fire and explosion consequence analysis.

Holding master’s degrees in Process Safety and Chemical Engineering from Memorial University of Newfoundland, in Canada and Yeungnam University, South Korea, and bachelor’s in chemical engineering from BUET, Dhaka, Professor Jujuly has published extensively on topics related to pipeline safety, CFD modeling, and risk assessment. He received NSERC Engagement Grant and the MITACS Accelerate Fellowship. As a licensed Professional Engineer (PEGNL) and active member of professional bodies such as the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), Professor Jujuly remains dedicated to advancing safety engineering through innovative research, teaching excellence, and industry collaboration.

List of Research activities:

1. Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling for the Pipeline Leak Detection System (LDS) in Offshore and Arctic Conditions (with Memorial University of Newfoundland and INTECSEA Canada).
2. Multiphase flow CFD model for natural gas pipeline hydrate induced vibration (with Memorial University and GRi Simulations Canada).
3. Fire and explosion modeling for LNG storage tank and consequence analysis (with Memorial University and C-RISE, Canada).
4. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) based approach to consequence assessment of accidental release of hydrocarbon during storage and transportation (with MUN).

Dr. James Payne

Dr. James E. Payne is Dean of the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University and holds the Norman and Suzanne Myers Endowed Chair and the Richard W. Poole Professorship. In addition to his over twenty years of leadership and administrative experience in higher education, Dr. Payne has continued to be an active researcher in applied economics with his more recent work focused on energy and financial economics. Dr. Payne has published more than 300 peer-reviewed journal articles in such outlets as the Review of Economics and Statistics, Economic Inquiry, Journal of Economic History, Canadian Journal of Economics, Southern Economic Journal, Economics Letters, Energy Economics, Ecological Economics, Public Choice, Journal of Macroeconomics, Annals of Tourism Research, Real Estate Economics, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Journal of Regional Science, Journal of Risk and Insurance, Journal of Financial Research, Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics and Econometrics, European Journal of Political Economy, and Economic Modelling, to name a few, which has generated nearly 25,000 citations to his research. His scholarly work has been recognized in the Stanford-Elsevier global ranking of researchers. Dr. Payne served as a Fulbright Research Scholar and a Fulbright Senior Specialist at the Institute of Economics in Zagreb, Croatia. Dr. Payne is also an associate editor and editorial board member for several academic journals. Dr. Payne received his B.A. in Economics from Berea College along with his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Economics from Florida State University.

 

John Schoeneman

John Schoeneman is an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University in the School of Global Studies and is the Associate Director for Research at the Wes Watkins Center for International Trade Development. Substantively, his research agenda focuses on international economic and political networks with a particular interest in foreign direct investment, trade policy, and energy security. Methodologically, his interests are social network analysis models, text analysis, and machine learning. In addition to his scholarship, his international experience includes living and working in South Korea, Japan, and China.

 

Dr. Javier Vilcáez

Dr. Javier Vilcáez serves as an Associate Professor in the Boone Pickens School of Geology at Oklahoma State University. His specialty is on energy, mineral, and groundwater resources development from subsurface. His research is on the Water-Energy-CO₂ nexus, aiming to advance the transition toward a net-zero emissions energy future. Dr. Vilcáez earned a PhD degree from Tohoku University (Japan) and an MS degree from Gunma University (Japan). His prior academic roles include tenure-track Assistant Professor at the University of Tokyo (Japan) and Postdoctoral Fellow/Scholar at both the Pennsylvania State University (U.S.) and Tohoku University (Japan). His industry experience includes working as a Production and Drilling Fluids Engineer.   To date, he has published nearly 50 peer-reviewed articles as first and/or corresponding author. His publications are on the computational and experimental aspects of Mining of Metals from Gangue Minerals and Brines, Enhanced Oil Recovery and Upgrading of Heavy Oil, Geological Carbon Storage, Biogenic and Hydrothermal Production of Hydrogen, and Petroleum Produced Water Treatment and Disposal. Dr. Vilcáez won the prestigious Monbusho Scholarship Award offered by the Japanese government as well as the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award offered by the U.S. government.

Dr. Jimmie Weaver

Jimmie was born and raised in Oklahoma. He completed B.S. in Chemistry with math and physics minors in 2004 from Southern Nazarene University where he was a defensive lineman on the football team during the team’s early years. After graduating summa cum laude he worked in the immunology lab of Prof. William Hildebrand, OUHSC, where he learned biological techniques, cell culture, ELISA assays, affinity chromatography, etc. After a year, Jimmie joined the chemistry graduate program at the University of Kansas where he worked towards his PhD with Prof. Jon Tunge. There, Jimmie developed Pd-catalyzed decarboxylative coupling reactions. After successful defense of his PhD, Jimmie took a post-doc position with Prof. Jon Ellman at Yale University in 2010.  Here, he focused on catalyst development and design for the use in asymmetric sulfinyl-urea catalyzed reactions. In the fall of 2012, Jimmie took an assistant professor position at Oklahoma State University where he has established an independent research program focused on innovative ways of generating and exploiting reactive intermediates and their use in applications such as C–H functionalization, fluorine sculpting, contra-thermodynamic catalysis, and environmental remediation of persistent organic pollutants.  In 2017, Jimmie was granted tenure and promoted to an Associate Professor of Chemistry.  In 2018, he along with Mr. Joel Roark co-founded a startup company, Weaver Labs, that seeks to exploit a fundamental understanding of chemistry to solve applied problems and to create technologies and inspire innovations so that our environment and communities flourish.

Jimmie has a vibrant and highly innovative research program at OSU that is focused on understanding the chemical principles of photosynthesis and reducing these to implementable strategies that can be exploited such that humans can also accomplish photosynthesis inspired, light driven chemistry.