WVU-LEADS

Laboratory for Engineering Application of Data Science

The main concentration of the research team at WVU-LEADS is engineering application of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. With almost three decades of research in this area WVU-LEADS has been developing descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive data analytics of physical phenomena mainly in petroleum engineering and in the past several years in chemical and mechanical engineering.

In petroleum engineering WVU-LEADS research and development has generated three scientific books, 8 book chapters, and more than 200 technical papers. The concentration of these research activities has been both on conventional and unconventional hydrocarbon resources as well as CO2 sequestration and storage in geological formations. In chemical and mechanical engineering related problems, WVU-LEADS have been developing Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies to enhance the utilization of Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD).

For conventional hydrocarbon resources WVU-LEADS has performed reservoir simulation models purely based on field measurements that is completely different from the traditional numerical reservoir simulation modeling. Using data generated from traditional numerical reservoir simulation models WVU-LEADS has developed AI-Based Smart Proxy Modeling that is far more accurate than traditional proxy modeling of engineering disciplines such as Reduced Order Models (ROM), and traditional statistics Response Surface Methods (RSM).

For unconventional hydrocarbon resources WVU-LEADS has developed predictive completion and production models purely based on field measurements avoiding the common assumptions, simplifications, preconceived notions, and biases that in the past decade has been controlling all the traditional modeling of hydrocarbon production from shale reservoirs in the petroleum industry.

WVU-LEADS is the founder of Petroleum Data Analytics (PDA) that currently is a technical section at Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE). Petroleum Data Analytics (PDA) is currently being used as the topic of courses in some of the universities in the United States.