Abbas Firoozabadi, a distinguished research professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering (ChBE) at Rice, and already a member of the National Academy of Engineering in the U.S., has been elected to the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
Firoozabadi was recognized for his “distinguished contributions to petroleum and natural gas engineering and to the promotion of China-U.S. exchanges and cooperation.”
The Firoozabadi Research Group focuses on molecular modeling and structures, and numerical simulation of subsurface flow, both devoted to hydrocarbon energy production. Recently, his lab has worked to understand the mechanical properties of solids, adsorption/desorption and flow in confinement as well as fracking by various fluids.
"This honor speaks to the global impact of Abbas’s research. He has figured out clever ways to re-engineer the release of hydrocarbons as cleanly and efficiently as possible. He uses the same fundamental thermodynamics and transport modeling approaches to figure out how to store CO2 safely. In this new era of energy transition, Firoozabadi is also figuring out novel ways to recover energy from geothermal formations,” said Michael Wong, Sunit Patel Professor in Molecular Nanotechnology and department chair of ChBE.
A native of Iran, Firoozabadi earned his M.S. and Ph.D. from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago in 1972 and 1975, respectively. In 1976 he served as a postdoctoral fellow in chemical engineering at the University of Michigan.
He has taught graduate-level courses on equilibrium and irreversible thermodynamics at the University of Texas at Austin, Imperial College of London, Yale, Tokyo University, Rice and Peking University. He has established a research consortium at the Reservoir Engineering Research Institute in Palo Alto, Ca., with funding from major energy companies and the U.S. Department of Energy.
In 2021, two other Rice researchers, Pedro Alvarez, the George R. Brown Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Antonios Mikos, the Louis Calder Professor of Bioengineering and ChBE, were also elected to the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
The Chinese Academy of Engineering has some 920 Chinese members and 93 members from other countries.