D. NicolásEspinoza

Nicolas Espinoza wearing formal suit jacket, leaning against railing in front of large laboratory equipment and smiling.
Professor Frank W. Jessen Centennial Fellowship in Petroleum Engineering

Research Areas
Research Interests

Mechanics and physics of natural porous solids; Coupled processes thermo-hydro-chemo-mechanical in porous media; Granular media and fractured media focused on applications for energy and the environment

About

D. Nicolás Espinoza is a professor in the Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. He earned his civil engineering diploma from Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (Argentina) in 2006, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2008 and 2011. Espinoza worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Laboratoire Navier within École de Ponts from 2012 to 2013.

He teaches reservoir geomechanics at the undergraduate level. At the graduate level, Espinoza teaches advanced geomechanics and radioactive waste geological disposal. For research, he leads the Energy Applied Geomechanics Laboratory (EAGLe), a research program focused on the mechanics and physics of coupled processes in natural porous solids.

The main fields of application of Espinoza’s research are carbon geological storage, unconventional oil and gas, geothermal energy, hydrogen storage and geologic hydrogen. He has co-authored over 140 technical articles, guided 10 graduate students towards a Ph.D. degree, served as an expert reviewer for several scientific and engineering journals and given seminars at various leading research and educational institutions. He shares geomechanics educational content through YouTube and GitHub with over 7k subscribers and 500k views.

Espinoza’s research combines analytical methods, experimental measurements, field observations and computational methods to solve thermo-chemo-hydro-mechanical coupled processes in porous media. The ultimate objective of his research is to solve grand scientific challenges in reactive and deformable porous media with applications to energy and environmental engineering.

Educational Qualifications

Ph.D., Civil Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011
M.S., Civil Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008
Engineering Diploma, Civil Engineering, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, 2005

Select Awards & Honors

  • UT Austin PGE Teaching Excellence Award (2024)
  • Early Career Keynote at the 57th U.S. Rock Mechanics Geomechanics Symposium (ARMA) (2023)
  • Energy and Fuels Rising Star – American Chemical Society’s Energy & Fuels (2022)

Select Publications

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