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Left: Dr. Alexandros Tasianas, right: Dr. Isra'a Mahfouz

Among the newest members of ANPERC's reseachers are several new postdocs, including Isra'a Mahfouz and Alexandros Tasianas. Isra'a Abu Mahfouz comes to KAUST from Oxford University, after several years of working in the petroleum industry and studying in the United Kingdom and Jordan. She is eager to apply this experience to KAUST's exciting research opportunities.

"I wanted to work for such a great University that has the resources and the people to support my work on large projects. I know that KAUST has an impressive reputation for providing professional development and training to new postdocs, and I'd like to take advantage of that training to increase my value to the University and develop my career path. I'm also looking forward to employing my previous expertise and varied research and technical skills to a good use for the University, and to be beneficial to KAUST.

"I am someone who is always passionate about new ideas and new ways of thinking, and I find it rewarding to apply new ideas and new analytical methods to our research, and develop them further to serve oil and gas research and/or industry. In addition, having worked in the oil and gas industry as a Senior Geoscientist with one of the top oil and gas companies, dealt with thousands of meters of core samples, and studied different outcrop analogues before doing my DPhil makes me confident in my technical and research skills, and my ability to open new research questions here at KAUST."

Alexandros Tasianas is the newest postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Hussein Hoteit's Advanced Reservoir Modeling and Simulation research group. His background in petroleum geoscience is focused on geological CO2 storage.

"I would like to contribute to the development of clean technologies and to the widespread deployment of carbon capture and sequestration and thus have a positive impact on mitigating climate change. I intend to use the great facilities that KAUST can provide and the expertise of the highly qualified academic staff in order to further develop my science skills. I look forward to promoting innovative thinking in CCS and publishing new ideas.

"I have always been fascinated with rocks, geomorphology, viewing geology from different perspectives, about our environment in general, about how it is changing and how all these complex geologic processes drive the Earth's climate system."

In addition to research, our newest postdocs are also adjusting to daily life at KAUST.

"I was amazed with the diversity in nationalities in KAUST," says Mahfouz, "how many languages you can hear during your day and by the quality of people. I feel very privileged to live in KAUST as this is an amazingly culturally-diverse place!"

Alexandros adds: "KAUST is an amazing place. I was really impressed by how comfortable one can feel in this environment, which is still conductive to creativity. The spirit of collaboration pervades almost every aspect of campus life and helps make great achievements possible."