Serving a global market requires a global perspective.
Chimote
One of the ways the EERC gains and maintains that perspective is through the breadth of its employees’ personal experience. Many EERC employees have come to the middle of the North American continent from countries all over the globe, enriching the EERC’s research with their different worldviews and perspectives, their knowledge and experience, and their creative problem-solving abilities.
The countries of origin of permanent and temporary employees, visiting researchers, and students at the EERC since just 1997 is a list of countries of the world: Australia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, India, Iran, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Mexico, Nepal, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Ukraine, and Yugoslavia. More international employees have come from China and India than any other country.
Liu
Although individual employee goals may vary, one of the most common reasons they give for wanting to work at the EERC is the opportunity to solve global energy and environmental problems and gain first-hand experience working with the EERC’s preeminent teams of scientists and engineers. International employees clearly bring as much to the EERC as they get, however. Five of the EERC’s current employees, their hometowns, and their educational training are highlighted here.
Saurabh Chimote, Web developer/administrator, came from Mumbai, Bombay, India, to attend the University of Cincinnati, where he earned a Master of Science in Information Systems and a Master of Business Administration. Chimote came to the EERC in 2010 because of a “good job opportunity working with some sharp minds in a great organization.”
Luo
Guoxiang “Gavin” Liu, research manager, came from Kunming City, Yunnan Province, in the southwestern part of China. Liu received his bachelor’s degree in analytical chemistry from Yunnan Normal University, P.R. China; his master’s degree in computer science from Leiden University, The Netherlands; and his Ph.D. degree in civil and environmental engineering from West Virginia University. He is currently pursuing a second master’s degree in mechanical engineering, with a focus on computational fluid dynamics, at West Virginia University. Liu joined the EERC in 2009 and appreciates the “family-like cooperation and teamwork for such great projects at the EERC.”
Kan Luo, research scientist, left Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, in P.R. China, to obtain her Ph.D. in polymer chemistry at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Luo was encouraged by a colleague to apply for a job opening at the EERC in 2009. She said, “I feel fortunate to work with such great professionals while pursuing my career goals here at the EERC.”
Saini
Dayanand Saini, research manager, received his B.S. in chemical engineering from the Chaudhary Charan Singh University, Meerut, India, and then joined Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited, a national oil company in India, as a reservoir engineer. A keen interest in research led Saini to Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, where he earned a Ph.D. in petroleum engineering. Saini came to the EERC in 2011 and said, “The main catalysts for my joining the EERC were the unique position of the EERC in the area of CO2 enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and storage research through the PCOR Partnership and, in general, a great opportunity to conduct research for developing new EOR technologies for unconventional Bakken reservoirs.”
Sun
Jenny Sun, research scientist, came from Beijing, P.R. China, to attend South Dakota State University, where she obtained an M.S. in analytical chemistry. Sun has been at the EERC since 1990 and said she “has had the privilege of witnessing the EERC grow in the past twenty-some years.”
Whatever their reasons for wanting to be here and wherever they come from, the approximately 300 employees at the EERC share a common goal of making the world a better and cleaner place to live.
Sandy Van Eck and Trish McGuire