Topic:
How Aramco is collaborating with entrepreneurs to fuel innovation – Presented by Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures and Aramco Boston Research Center.
Time:
6 – 7:30 PM,Thursday, Dec 6th, 2018
Agenda:
6:00 - 6:30 PM Networking and refreshments
6:30 PM – 6:45 PM Presentation by Martin Poitzsch, Ph.D.
6:45 PM – 6:50 PM Q&A
6:50 PM – 7:10 PM Presentation by Jim Sledzik.
7:05 PM – 7:30 PM Q&A
Where:
MIT Sloan – Building E62 : Room 223, 100 Main St, Cambridge, MA 02142
Speakers:
Jim Sledzik, Managing Director, Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures
Martin E. Poitzsch, Ph.D., Technology Leader, Aramco Research Center – Boston
Abstract:
The Oil & Gas industry is currently at the forefront developing a large number of advanced technologies. Innovative approaches and solutions to challenges facing the industry allow significant improvements in productivity, efficiency and safety. Many companies depend on continuous improvement and innovation to produce energy. They heavily invest in developing technologies within their own research & development centers, as well as in collaboration with innovators from various fields at universities, startups and with companies from other industries. This event will introduce the approach Aramco is taking to develop technologies at their research center in Boston, and how Aramco Energy Ventures is collaborating with entrepreneurs to realize unique innovations within the industry.
Profiles:
Jim Sledzik is Managing Director for the North America team of Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures (SAEV). The corporate venture capital fund invests globally in early-stage and high-growth technology companies of strategic importance to Saudi Aramco. With more than 30 years of experience in the oil and gas industry, including 10 years in venture capital and private equity investing, Jim joined Aramco in October 2018. He is responsible for overseeing existing investments and growing SAEV’s investment portfolio in North America. Jim earned a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Pittsburgh and a bachelor’s of science in geosciences from Pennsylvania State University. He is a member of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG), the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) and serves on the advisory board for the Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship at Rice University.
Martin Poitzsch holds an A.B. from Washington University (St. Louis) and a Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard University. After Harvard, he was an NRC Post Doc in the group of 2012 Physics Nobel Laureate David Wineland at NIST in Boulder, CO, From 1994 through 2004, Martin held a range of R & D and management positions in Schlumberger Oilfield Services, starting in “Logging While Drilling” Engineering in Houston. From 1996 to 2001, he led the NMR While Drilling product development team and then the Magnetic Resonance (both product engineering and manufacturing) department in Houston. From 2002 to 2004, he was the Wireline VP – Product Development based in Paris and Houston. From 2004 through 2013 he was the Research Director for Sensor Physics at Schlumberger-Doll Research, leading efforts on a wide range of physics-based sensing technologies being evaluated for possible exploitation as geophysical/petrophysical reservoir probes. His work also involved extensive collaboration with Schlumberger engineering centers and with external partners in universities, government labs, and other companies. In 2013-14 he returned to Houston to serve as Completions Sensing Architect for the oil industry’s most advanced integrated SmartWell completions project implemented in collaboration with Saudi Aramco. In late 2014, Martin moved to Aramco’s new US Research Center in Cambridge, MA, where he is leading a team of nano-materials scientists and chemists developing a new class of injectable and mobile reservoir “NanoProbes” to change the game on the illumination, monitoring, and increased recovery of large oil reservoirs.