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Elizabeth Valdes is a freshman at the University of Florida. This summer she was in the Summer Engineering Freshman Transition Program at UF where she gained experience in working with Solidworks and Autocad. She intends on becoming a Mechanical Engineer and working in the field of renewable energy. Elizabeth is involved with FGLSAMP, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, and she is apart of the Emerging Scholars Program. She is the recipient of the Broward County Salute to Education Scholarship and the Davie-Cooper City Chamber of Commerce Scholarship. Currently she is doing research in the causes and effects of global warming with Professor Dr. Najafi and coauthor Carlene Cuadra.

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Carlene Cuadra is a student at the University of Florida with a current GPA of 3.8. During the summer of 2016 she participated in the EFTP Plus Summer Bridge Program where she was introduced to several types of engineering majors and many professors and students. In this program she developed experience using Autocad and Solidworks. She is a member of the Socieity of Women Engineers and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers. Carlene is currently doing research with Dr. Fazil Najafi and Elizabeth Valdes on renewable energy and global warming. Carlene aspires to get her degree in computer engineering in the year 2020.

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Dr. Fazil T. Najafi

For more than forty years, Dr. Fazil T. Najafi has worked in government, industry and education. He earned a BSCE in 1963 from the American College of Engi¬neering, in his place of birth, Kabul, Afghanistan, and since then came to the United States with a Fulbright scholarship earning his MS in civil engineering in 1972 and a Ph.D. degree in transportation in 1977. His experience in industry includes work as a highway, structural, mechanical, and consultant engineer and construction manager for government groups and private companies. Najafi went on to teaching, first becoming an assistant professor at Villanova University, Pennsylvania in 1977, a visiting professor at George Mason University, and then to the University of Florida, Department of Civil Engineering, where he advanced to associate professor in 1991 and then full professor in 2000 in the Department of Civil and Coastal Engineering. He has received numerous awards including a scholarship award (Fulbright), teaching awards, best paper awards, community service awards, and admis¬sion as an Eminent Engineer into Tau Beta Pi. His research on passive radon-resistant new residential building construction was adapted in HB1647 building code of Florida Legislature. Najafi is a member of numerous professional societies and has served on many committees and programs, and continuously attends and presents refereed papers at international, national, and local professional meetings and conferences. Lastly, Najafi attends courses, seminars and workshops, and has developed courses, videos and software packages during his career. His areas of specialization include transportation planning and management, legal aspects, construction contract administration, and public works.

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Dr. Nick M. Safai has been an ASEE officer and has served in multiple divisions since 1997 and a member (since 1991) for the past 26 years. He is currently the president of the International Division, and also the Program Chair for the Graduate Studies Division. He also has served as the tresurere and annual program chair previously. He has been the six-time elected as the Program Chair of the ASEE International Division for approximately 15 years. Nick has had a major role in development and expansion of the division. Under his term as the International Division Program Chair the international division expanded, broadened in topics, and the number of sessions increased from a few technical sessions to over eighteen sessions in the recent years.
The ASEE International Division by votes, has recognized Nick’s years of service through several awards over the past years. Nick has been the recipient of multiple Service awards (examples: 2010, 2006, 2004, 1996), Global Engineering Educators award (example: 2007, 2005), Best Paper award (examples: 2010, 2005, 2004, 1995) and other awards from the International Division for exceptional contribution to the international division of the American Society for Engineering Education.
Examples of some Awards from other Professional Organizations:
• American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE): Engineering Educator of the Year Award 2004.
• Utah Engineers Council, UEC: Engineering Educator of the Year 2005 award, in recognition of outstanding achievements in the field of engineering and for service to society.
• SLC Foundation; Salt lake City, Utah: Teaching Excellence Award 2004.
• American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE): Chapter faculty Advisor recognition award 2002.
• Computational Sciences and Education; recognition for outstanding contributions and for exemplary work in helping the division achieve its goals1998.
• Engineering Division; recognition for outstanding contributions and for exemplary work in helping the division achieves its goals 1995.
• Science and Humanities; recognition for outstanding contributions and for exemplary work in helping the fields achieve its May 1994.
• Math & Physical Sciences; appreciation for academic expertise February 1994.

Academics: Nick Safai received his PhD degree in engineering from the Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey in 1979. He also did a one year post-doctoral at Princeton University after receiving his degrees from Princeton University. His areas of interest, research topics, and some of the research studies have been;
• Multi-Phase Flow through Porous Media
• Wave propagation in Filamentary Composite Materials
• Vertical and Horizontal Land Deformation in a De-saturating Porous Medium
• Stress Concentration in Filamentary Composites with Broken Fibers
• Aviation; Developments of New Crashworthiness Evaluation Strategy for Advanced General Aviation
• Pattern Recognition of Biological Photomicrographs Using Coherent Optical Techniques
Nick also received his four masters; in Aerospace Engineering, Civil Engineering, Operation Research, and Mechanical Engineering all from Princeton University during the years from 1973 through 1976. He received his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical engineering, with minor in Mathematics from Michigan State. Nick has served and held positions in Administration (Civil, Chemical, Computer Engineering, Electrical, Environmental, Mechanical, Manufacturing, Bioengineering, Material Science), and as Faculty in the engineering department for the past twenty seven years.

Industry experience: Consulting; since 1987; Had major or partial role in: I) performing research for industry, DOE and NSF, and II) in several oil industry or government (DOE, DOD, and NSF) proposals.
Performed various consulting tasks from USA for several oil companies (Jawaby Oil Service Co., WAHA Oil and Oasis Co., London, England). The responsibilities included production planning, forecasting and reservoir maintenance. This production planning and forecasting consisted of history matching and prediction based on selected drilling. The reservoir maintenance included: water/gas injection and gas lift for selected wells to optimize reservoir production plateau and prolonging well’s economic life.

Terra Tek, Inc., Salt Lake City, UT, 1985-1987; Director of Reservoir Engineering; Responsible of conducting research for reservoir engineering projects, multiphase flow, well testing, in situ stress measurements, SCA, hydraulic fracturing and other assigned research programs. In addition, as a group director have been responsible for all management and administrative duties, budgeting, and marketing of the services, codes and products.

Standard oil Co. (Sohio Petroleum Company), San Francisco, California, 1983-85; Senior Reservoir Engineer; Performed various tasks related to Lisburne reservoir project; reservoir simulation (3 phase flow), budgeting, proposal review and recommendation, fund authorizations (AFE) and supporting documents, computer usage forecasting, equipment purchase/lease justification (PC, IBM-XT, Printer, etc.), selection/justification and award of contract to service companies, lease evaluation, economics, reservoir description and modeling, lift curves, pressure maintenance (gas injection analysis, micellar-flooding, and water-flooding), Special Core Analysis (SCA), PVT correlations, petrophysics and water saturation mapping.

Performed reservoir description and modeling, material balance analysis. Recovery factors for the reservoir. Administrative; coordination and organization of 2 and 6 week workplans, 1982 and 1983 annual specific objectives, monthly reports, recommendation of courses and training program for the group.
Chevron Oil Company, 1979- 1983;
Chevron Overseas Petroleum Inc. (COPI), San Francisco, California 1981-1983. Project Leader/Reservoir Engineer, Conducted reservoir and some production engineering work using the in-house multiphase model/simulators. Evaluation/development, budgeting and planning for international fields; Rio Zulia field – Columbia, Pennington Field – Offshore Nigeria, Valenginan, Grauliegend and Rothliegend Reservoir – Netherlands. Also represented COPI as appropriate when necessary.

Chevron Geo-Sciences Company, Houston, TX, 1979-1980 Reservoir Engineer Applications, Performed reservoir simulation studies, history matching and performance forecasting, water-flooding for additional recovery (Rangeley Field – Colorado, Windalia Field – Australia), steam-flooding performances (Kern River, Bakersfield, California), gas blowdown and injection (Eugene Island Offshore Louisiana) on domestic and foreign fields where Chevron had an interest, using Chevron’s CRS3D, SIS and Steam Tube simulator programs.

Chevron Oil Field Research Co. (COFRC), La Habra 1978-1979, California. Research Engineer, Worked with Three-Phase, Three-Dimensional Black Oil Reservoir Simulator, Steam Injection Simulator, Pipeflow #2. Also performed history matching and 20-year production forecast including gas lift and desalination plants for Hanifa Reservoir, Abu Hadriya Field (ARAMCO).

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