As we ring in 2025, we’re celebrating the bright future ahead for our engineers and reflecting on all that we accomplished last year. A look back at our top moments of 2024 makes one thing clear — UT PGE continues to be the pre-eminent program for innovation and excellence in energy.

10.

UT PGE Hosts 4th Annual Energy AI Hackathon
A record number of UT Austin students competed in our most recent Energy AI Hackathon hosted by resident AI experts John Foster and Michael Pyrcz. Teams spent 36 hours solving a challenging multivariate energy problem designed by graduate student architects Elnara Rustamzade and Fehmi Özbayrak.

9.

Song Named Scialog Fellow — Twice
Assistant Professor Wen Song has been named a Scialog Fellow in both Negative Emissions Science and Sustainable Minerals, Metals and Materials (SM3). Scialog — short for “science + dialog” — is designed to spark intensive interdisciplinary conversation around globally important scientific themes.

8.

Six Alumni Receive UT PGE’s Highest Honor
UT PGE honored its 14th class of distinguished alumni — H. Kent Brock, Kenneth Bowen Ford, C. Susan Howes, Horacio Daniel Marin, R. Graham Whaling and Sanzhar Zharkeshov — at a ceremony and dinner in November. This year’s honorees join an elite group of energy leaders and innovators.

7.

Energy Transition Expert Joins Faculty
Hewei Tang joined UT PGE as assistant professor last fall. She brings an extensive background in engineering clean energy, including scientific machine learning, geologic carbon storage, geothermal energy, integrated reservoir characterization and reservoir simulation. She comes to UT PGE from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

6.

UT PGE Dominates Cockrell School Awards
Michael Pyrcz and Yingda Lu swept the Cockrell School’s 2024 teaching awards. Pyrcz won the Lockheed Martin Award for Excellence in Engineering Teaching, and Lu received the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Engineering Teaching by an Assistant Professor. In addition, advising coordinator Jaimie Haider and lab manager Daryl Nygaard won 2024 Staff Excellence awards.

5.

Students Win International Recognition
Sara Al Lawati, Lina Al Khowaiter, Danya Almohammed and Mohamed Awad placed second in the Switch Energy Alliance international case competition. The team’s plan addressed energy poverty and sustainability in Egypt. For the second year in a row, UT PGE students also won prestigious Chevron and Henry DeWitt Smith fellowships.

4.

UT PGE Part of First DOE Geologic Hydrogen Funding
Four faculty members — Hugh Daigle, Nicolas Espinoza, John Foster and Wen Song — received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy as part of a $20 million first-ever DOE effort to accelerate the natural subsurface generation of low-cost, low-emissions hydrogen.

3.

Delshad and Heidari Win Global SPE Awards
The Society of Petroleum Engineers recognized two faculty members with international awards: Mojdeh Delshad won the 2024 Pioneer Award for expertise in improved oil recovery, and Zoya Heidari was honored with the 2024 Lester C. Uren Award for technical excellence.

2.

UT PGE Ranks No. 1 in World
UT PGE topped Quacquarelli Symonds’ (QS) World University Rankings by Subject in petroleum engineering again in 2024. We also maintained the No. 1 spot in U.S. News & World Report’s graduate petroleum engineering rankings, a position we’ve held continuously since 2003.

1.

Balhoff Unveils New Vision
Chair Matt Balhoff recently announced his ambitious vision for UT PGE: Shape the world’s energy future through innovative education and research in sustainable subsurface energy production and storage. The vision and its corresponding mission stem from invaluable input from faculty, staff, students, alumni and industry partners.