MEET THE KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Dr. Majid A. Abdi
Executive VP Engineering and Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
LNG Newfoundland and Labrador Limited (LNG NL)
Dr. Majid Abdi’s expertise, acquired in industry and academia, lies in mid and downstream natural gas, oil production and processing, and energy industries. He has more than 35 years of industrial and academic experience primarily related to process design and development, project management, feasibility studies, technology developments, as well as engineering consultancy in energy related projects.
Dr. Abdi is currently acting as Executive VP Engineering and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of LNG Newfoundland and Labrador Limited (LNG NL), managing engineering and technical scopes of the company, developing offshore natural gas in Newfoundland, Canada. He has been serving offshore industries in NL for the past 20 years, on offshore operators’ technical teams overseeing flow assurance and field developments activities. He has been hired by Aker Solutions to conduct specialized engineering studies related to existing offshore operating platforms.
He has authored over 100 technical papers and conference presentations, and holds a Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada; M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering, and B.Sc. in Chemical and Petrochemical Engineering, both from Tehran Polytechnic, Tehran, Iran. Dr. Abdi is a Professional Engineer with registration in Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada.
Dr. Nizar Chemingui
R&D Department Manager for Imaging Geophysics
PGS
Dr. Chemingui holds a Ph.D. in Geophysics from Stanford University, a Master’s degree from Rice University, and a Bachelor degree in Geophysics from the Colorado School of Mines. He joined the seismic industry in 1999. He worked for ExxonMobil in the subsurface imaging division and for ION’s GX Technology as Senior Research Geophysicist. In 2006 he joined PGS and has held various positions in the R&D organization. Currently he’s the R&D department manager for Imaging Geophysics at PGS. He has authored and co-authored numerous publications and patents on seismic imaging. He received academic and professional awards for his work, including the Cecil H. and Ida Green award in geophysics from CSM and a best paper award in the Leading Edge. He is a member of SEG, EAGE, AGU, and GSH.
Dr. Alison Malcolm
Associate Professor of Geophysics
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Alison Malcolm is an Associate Professor in the Earth Sciences Department at Memorial University of Newfoundland. She earned her Bachelor's degree in geophysics from UBC in 2000 and her PhD in 2005 from the Colorado School of Mines. After some time as a postdoc she spent six years as an Assistant Professor of Geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before moving to Memorial in 2014. She has supervised a dozen graduate and undergraduate students and published more than 50 papers and another 60 Conference Papers. Her research interests include seismic imaging, reservoir monitoring, nonlinear elasticity, and uncertainty quantification.
Erin Gillis
Manager, Leads and Prospects Team
O&G Corporation of Newfoundland and Labrador
Erin Gillis joined OilCo's predecessor company, Nalcor Energy-Oil and Gas, in February 2010. As the Manager of OilCo’s Leads and Prospects Team, Erin leads a team focused on the interpretation and mapping of play trends, leads and prospects, as well as hydrocarbon resource potential within Newfoundland and Labrador’s frontier basins.
Before joining Nalcor Energy, Erin worked as a Geologist on the Thermal Team for Canadian Natural Resources Limited.
Over the past 12 years Erin has authored and co-authored over 20 peer reviewed papers and presentations on the frontier basins offshore Newfoundland and Labrador.
Erin is currently enrolled in the EMBA program at Smith School of Business at Queens University. She also attended Memorial University of Newfoundland where she attained a Bachelor of Science and a Masters of Science (Geology).
Erin has 16 years’ experience in the oil and gas industry and is a registered member of the Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Newfoundland and Labrador.