The Canadian Applied and Industrial Mathematics Society and the Fields Institute are pleased to announce that Professor Zhangxing (John) Chen has been awarded the 2017 CAIMS-Fields Industrial Mathematics Prize for his seminal contributions to industrial and applied mathematics, computational science, and modelling of flow in porous media. 

Dr. Chen is a Professor in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at University of Calgary and currently holds the NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Reservoir Simulation and the AITF (iCORE) Industrial Chair in Reservoir Modeling. His group uses modeling and simulation to develop new, more economical, and more sustainable ways to recover heavy oil and oil sands resources. 

Throughout his career, Dr. Chen has led many collaborative projects with industrial partners including Suncor, Nexen Energy, Petróleos Mexicanos, China National Petroleum Corp., and Computer Modelling Group. His research has had major impact on practical applications in the oil and energy sectors, as evidenced by his 15 patents.

Dr. Chen's publication record is stellar, with 16 books and over 500 refereed journal papers covering problems ranging from existence-uniqueness theory, finite element approximations, homogenization, and parallel algorithms, with applications to multi-phase porous media flow, CO2 sequestration, and semiconductor device simulations. Dr. Chen has also made major contributions to training, having supervised over 100 graduate students and postdocs in industrial applications of mathematics and advanced computing algorithms.   

Dr. Chen holds a PhD (1991) from Purdue University and held positions at Xi’an Jiaotong University, Peking University, University of Minnesota, Texas A&M University, Mobil, and Southern Methodist University (SMU), before arriving at the University of Calgary in 2007.

As part of the award, Dr. Chen will be invited to deliver a lecture at the CAIMS Annual Meeting taking place in Halifax from July 17 to 21, 2017.

See more about Dr. Chen’s work here.