We are delighted to welcome two eminent guest faculty members this semester to our graduate program. Two former graduates of Istanbul Technical University’s Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering Department, Dr. Cem Sarica and Dr. Fikri Kuchuk are going to be teaching two graduate courses in the 2021/22 Spring Semester:

- Dr. Sarica will be teaching PET 501E: Advanced Production Engineering.
- Dr. Kuchuk will be teaching PET 607E: Advanced Formation Testing. 

We welcome Dr. Sarica and Dr. Kuchuk to our program, and thank them for their valuable contributions.

Dr. Cem Sarica is F.H. “Mick” Merelli/Cimarex Energy Professor of Petroleum Engineering at the University of Tulsa (TU), and the director of three industry supported consortia at the TU: Fluid Flow, Paraffin Deposition, and Horizontal Well Artificial Lift Projects. His research interests are production engineering, multiphase flow in pipes, flow assurance and horizontal wells. He has over 150 publications. He holds BS and MS degrees in petroleum engineering from Istanbul Technical University and Ph.D. degree in petroleum engineering from TU. He is a member of Technical Advisory Committee of British Hydrodynamics Research Group (BHRg) Multiphase Production Conferences. He was the Technical Program Chair of BHRg 2008 and 2012 Conferences. He currently serves as a member of SPE Projects, Facilities and Construction Advisory Committee, and a board member of Flow Assurance Section of SPE. He has previously served in several SPE committees and on editorial boards of SPEJ and JERT of ASME. He is the recipient of 2010 SPE International Production and Operations Award. He is recognized as a Distinguished Member of SPE in 2012. He is 2015 recipient of the SPE John Franklin Carll Award. He is also one of the 2015 recipients of the SPE Cedric K. Ferguson Certificate.

Dr. Fikri Kuchuk is currently an Emeritus Fellow Geoscientist. Previously, he was a Schlumberger Fellow and a Chief Reservoir Engineer (1994-2017) in the United States, France, and Dubai. He retired from Schlumberger after thirty-five years with the company. Dr. Kuchuk was a consulting professor at the Petroleum Engineering Department of Stanford University from 1988 to 1994. He taught Advanced Well Testing. He has an MS degree from the Technical University of Istanbul, in Istanbul, Turkey, and MS and PhD degrees from Stanford University, California, all in petroleum engineering. He is a Distinguished and Honorary Member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, and the American National Academy of Engineering. He received the SPE 1994 Reservoir Engineering, SPE 2000 Formation Evaluation, and SPE 2001 Regional Service Awards, the Henri G. Doll Award in 1997 and 1999, the Nobel Laureate Physicist Kapitsa Gold Medal, and the SPE 2010 Honorary Membership.