Jennifer Adams
PhD student, Geology, University of Calgary
Alberta Ingenuity Student Scholarship recipient
You probably don't pay attention to the carton of milk biodegrading at the back of your fridge until an odiferous whiff sends you rummaging.
“Biodegradation,” geologist and modeler Jennifer Adams points out with this graphic example, “is going on all around us all the time, under the earth’s surface as well as in your fridge.”
Underground, this process has continued for millions of years, as microorganisms have been eating away tasty bits of oil and leaving the really heavy sludgy bits behind as tar sands. “Knowing how and where to find oil that is less degraded benefits the bottom line for both the oil industry and the environment,” Jennifer says.
A self-confessed nitpicker and detail person, Jennifer designed her first numerical model at age 18. Now a PhD student, she creates models to simulate chemical evolution of oil in reservoirs to explain the formation of heavy oil and tar sands. With a research team at the University of Calgary, she is trying to simplify very complex systems so that others can predict production and anticipate the quality of oil before drilling.
Jennifer and her team try to integrate the properties of oil and its chemistry with the geology of oil reservoirs. “Those two things feed into the engineering of oil recovery–actually getting the fluids out of the ground.” Jennifer contributes the fourth foundation pillar to finding and producing oil-the numerical simulation.
In Jennifer’s world, research and its commercial applications are closely tied. Her university research team and its spin-off company, Gushor, are developing new industry tools and collecting patents along the way. Only months old and in high demand, Gushor employs a full-time staff of seven and many part-time project managers. The company has already patented an instrument to extract oil mechanically from core and now cuttings, which is a new capability, and has just released its first piece of biodegradation software.
Jennifer’s work with industry provides perspective and enriches her research. The more samples analyzed from real reservoirs, the more results can be used to understand fundamental science. “The last six months have been a whirlwind,” Jennifer laughs, and she still has to get that PhD finished, so she’s taking the summer off to write. After that, she’ll be back to unearthing the secrets of the subterranean world at the behest of Alberta’s hot oil industry.
- Born in Kitchener-Waterloo
- Starts collecting rocks
- Joins geological field party in high Arctic
- Working for Geological Survey, builds first numerical model
- Enters undergraduate co-op program geology at University of Waterloo
- Develops fluid-flow modeling software
Graduates and moves to Edmonton for graduate work in basinal fluid flow - Starts work at Alberta Geological Survey doing CO2 sequestration
- Starts PhD at University of Calgary in deep subsurface petroleum biodegradation
- Named one of the Brightest and Best in MacLean's magazine; receives Alberta Ingenuity Student Scholarship
- Founding member of Gushor, University of Calgary spin-off petroleum biogeology company