In each of the University of Wyoming Engineering Initiative clusters, graduate students—and sometimes undergraduates as well—outnumber the faculty members and play a crucial role in the research. “On the team, doctoral students play the No. 1 role,” says Professor Maohong Fan. He adds that the advanced conversion research is now attracting many top domestic and international students. “I’m very happy to work with not just Ph.D. students but also master’s and undergraduate students. With the rich chemical and fuel conversion experiences, students can get high-paying jobs easily.”
Professor Vladimir Alvarado says the multi-disciplinary nature of the clusters also applies to the students, which helps prepare them for how companies do business nowadays. “Several of the students on my team will be co-advised by more than one discipline—it’s going to be a cross-fertilization.”
One of the petroleum engineering Ph.D. candidates in his cluster, Griselda Garcia-Olvera, echoes this sentiment: “In the group, we have the opportunity to study different topics that will be important and impact our research; for example, I am taking classes in geology and chemistry.” In Mexico, Garcia-Olvera works for the oil company Pemex. When the company wanted to send her for her doctorate, she chose UW and now works on Alvarado’s improved oil recovery research team. “The oil and rock formations are different in every reservoir,” she says. “In the lab, we try to understand the mechanisms to optimize the fluid-fluid and rock-fluid interactions in the reservoir in order to produce more oil in an economical way. I think it’s important when you finish the university to be able to say you have experience with real cases,” she adds.