Media Releases

University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering announces establishment of the Foundation CMG Research Chair in Fundamental Petroleum Rock Physics and Rock Mechanics

June 2, 2016

Toron­to, ON – Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Pro­fes­sor Gio­van­ni Gras­sel­li, of the Depart­ment of Civ­il Engi­neer­ing, has been named the inau­gur­al hold­er of the Foun­da­tion CMG Indus­tri­al Research Chair in Fun­da­men­tal Petro­le­um Rock Physics and Rock Mechan­ics.

Pro­fes­sor Gras­sel­li is join­ing 12 chairs at 12 uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing Penn State and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas in Austin, in 6 coun­tries that are fund­ed by the Cana­di­an non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion to inves­ti­gate lead­ing edge research and inno­va­tion in oil and gas reser­voir mod­el­ling.

In addi­tion to fund­ing Grasselli’s chair, Foun­da­tion CMG’s $1.35-million con­tri­bu­tion will be used as seed fund­ing toward the devel­op­ment of a new cen­tre of excel­lence at U of T over the next five years.

By com­bin­ing fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of rock physics and rock mechan­ics with seis­mic imag­ing, the cen­tre will pro­duce research and devel­op tech­nol­o­gy for smarter, uncon­ven­tion­al petro­le­um pro­duc­tion, while reduc­ing the envi­ron­men­tal impacts and con­tribut­ing towards safer field oper­a­tions.

Foun­da­tion CMG’s sup­port will cat­alyze research col­lab­o­ra­tion between exist­ing experts at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, cre­at­ing the nec­es­sary crit­i­cal mass to suc­cess­ful­ly tack­le the devel­op­ment of  a sound phys­i­cal-based and ful­ly ver­i­fied geo­me­chan­i­cal mod­el­ling approach to sim­u­late hydraulic frac­tur­ing in shale and tight oil and gas reser­voirs.

About Foun­da­tion CMG

Foun­da­tion CMG’s mis­sion is to pro­mote and fund uni­ver­si­ty research in oil and gas reser­voir sim­u­la­tion with indus­try col­lab­o­ra­tion and tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer. Com­put­er Mod­el­ling Group formed in 1978 in the Chem­i­cal and Petro­le­um Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment at Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­gary with the objec­tive to car­ry out research in com­put­er sim­u­la­tion and to devel­op lead­ing edge reser­voir sim­u­la­tion soft­ware for the petro­le­um indus­try.

In 1997 the com­pa­ny was divid­ed into a new­ly cre­at­ed pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­ny, CMGL, and a not-for-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion, Foun­da­tion CMG.

Foun­da­tion CMG pro­motes and finan­cial­ly sup­ports research and devel­op­ment and stu­dents through research grants at uni­ver­si­ties with lead­ing research pro­grams focused on reser­voir sim­u­la­tion. Foun­da­tion CMG’s vision is to be the cat­a­lyst for invest­ment of $700 mil­lion toward the train­ing of 5,000 grad­u­ate stu­dents work­ing on reser­voir sim­u­la­tion research top­ics over a peri­od of 25 years.

Foun­da­tion CMG part­ners with gov­ern­ment, indus­try and uni­ver­si­ties to dri­ve unique mul­ti-year renew­able sup­port of stu­dent edu­ca­tion and world-lead­ing researchers at uni­ver­si­ties, in Europe, Asia, South Amer­i­ca and North Amer­i­ca.

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For more infor­ma­tion:

U of T Media Rela­tions
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