Muhammad Usman, a Ph.D. student of Prof. Volker Vahrenkamp is currently visiting RWTH Aachen university as a visiting Ph.D. student.

His work in Aachen focuses on understanding the compositional heterogeneities of petroleum source rocks and their effects on hydrocarbon generation, retention and migration. To achieve this goal, he is performing artificial maturation experiments on organic-rich source rocks and identifying the changes with molecular geochemical analysis and organic petrography.

RWTH Aachen is a top-ranked university in Germany, and its Energy and Mineral resource group led by Prof. Ralf Littke is well-known for its applied research in source rock geochemistry and petroleum system analysis.