Dr Ali Sahin

Dr. Ali Sahin served a number of years at the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. He is currently working as a Research Scientist in the Research Institute at the same university. He is associated with the Center for Petroleum and Minerals, and has accomplished various research projects in the field of geostatistical petroleum reservoir characterization, and mineral deposit evaluation. He was the manager of the Reservoir Characterization Consortium Program initiated in June 2000 with the support of major oil companies. Currently, he is working as the manager of two major projects, including the Sino-Saudi Gas Exploration in Rub' Al-Khali Region, and Geostatistical Modeling of Arab-D Reservoir in Shedgum Oil Field.

He received his B. Sc. (Honors) degree in Mining Geology and, Ph. D. degree in Applied Geostatistics from the University of Leeds, U.K. After his graduation, he joined the Mineral Exploration and Research Institute in Ankara (Turkey) and worked as a Senior Geologist for two and the half years. During his stay in Ankara, he also served at the Department of Mining and Petroleum Engineering in the Middle East Technical University (METU) as a faculty member. His responsibilities included the introduction, development and instruction of Mining Geostatistics course as well as instruction of the existing Mine Surveying course at METU.

He joined the Department of Earth Sciences at KFUPM in 1982. Besides teaching several undergraduate geology courses at this department, he initiated, developed and instructed a graduate course in Geostatistics and an undergraduate course in Computer Applications in Geology. He also participated in the supervision of a number of M. Sc. theses. After his appointment to the current position in 1995, he continued with his teaching activities (on part-time basis) in both the Department of Earth Sciences and Department of Petroleum Engineering at KFUPM. During the recent years, he coordinated and instructed several short courses and workshops in the fields of geostatistics and reservoir modeling.

He has completed numerous research projects and published several papers in the field of geostatistics. He received Prince Mohammed Bin Fahd Research Excellence Award in 1997, the KFUPM Distinguished Research Team Award in 1998, and the KFUPM Distinguished Research Project Leadership Award in May 2008. He served in the Editorial Board of the Arabian Journal of Science and Engineering as an Earth Sciences Editor for six years (1987 to 1993), and in the SPE (Houston, Texas) Annual Conference Program Committee for Reservoir Geology and Geophysics for five years (2003 to 2008). He is a member of the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy (UK), American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Society of Petroleum Engineers (Saudi Arabian Section), Chamber of Geological Engineers (Turkey), European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers (Netherlands), and Dhahran Geosciences Society (Saudi Arabia).