keiron_durantChemical engineering student Keiron Durant has been busy this semester. In addition to attending class and working on his honors thesis, he also spent the past few months as part of an international team of students participating in Education Week, a program hosted by the International Petroleum Technology Conference. Keiron was on a team of 10 students from different countries, including Pakistan, Nigeria and Russia. They worked together over Skype, Facebook and email to come up with a solution for an engineering problem.

As part of Education Week, 100 students were selected from around the world to work in teams on actual engineering challenges. Keiron’s team was sponsored by China National Petroleum, and their assignment was to use intelligent field and intelligent well technologies to increase the production of an oil field. Between December and March, the team communicated online to come up with a plan. They met in person at the International Petroleum Conference in China, where they had four days to practice the presentation they made at the conference. Read More

*Durant is also an Arkansas Alumni Association Board of Directors scholar.