Manchester MScs win EAGE Laurie Dake Challenge 2023

A team of Manchester MSc students, from the Geoscience for Sustainable Energy, Petroleum Geoscience and Subsurface Energy Engineering MSc programmes, have won the prestigious European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers (EAGE) Laurie Dake Challenge. 

The final was held at the EAGE Annual Conference in Vienna in June 2023, a small group of teams, selected from over 30 teams competing from around the world, had their opportunity to impress the judges with their design for a geothermal development in the Vienna Basin. 

The team from Manchester - “Geocreate” - consisted of Jinan Irbah Salsabila , Nisa Sukkee and Tara Anisa from MSc Petroleum Geoscience, Yasser Omer from MSc Geoscience for Sustainable Energy and Masenesa Shniab from MSc Sustainable Engineering. 

Six teams from five continents were selected as finalists to present their development plan to a team of judges. Tara said “It was fascinating how each of the 6 teams from all around the world came up with really different development plans. It was really rewarding after all the efforts and long hours we put into this challenge. It is also amazing how much transferrable skills and knowledge that I got from my MSc, and how much new knowledge that I learnt about geothermal energy and development from my talented teammates. We thank Prof Mads Huuse for introducing the challenge to us and helping us throughout the competition, and PhD David Johnstone for his amazing insight on the geothermal development during our numerous discussions and of course the EES department of The University of Manchester for all their support every step of the way”. 

Nisa added “I was so grateful and proud to be part of our team and this challenge. It was such a great time to know all amazing and talented people from multinational companies and universities. I have learned a lot beyond my field and interest.” 

Our MScs use the skills developed on their courses, but undertake this competition in their own time, which is no mean feat during such a busy 12 month MSc course. Congratulations for their remarkable performance! 

The FIELD Challenge – a Fully Integrated Evaluation and Development task, now also known as the “Laurie Dake” Challenge was inaugurated in 2011. Each year about half of the active EAGE student chapters in the worldwide pit their skills for a grand prize and all the recognition provided by EAGE, the EAGE Student Fund and the data set sponsors. 

Laurence Patrick (Laurie) Dake was a preeminent scientist and renowned author, paving the way for the education of new generations of reservoir engineers. He made great contributions to the petroleum engineering profession, and in evoking his exceptional creative spirit, EAGE is pleased to name the FIELD Challenge after him. 

The Laurie Dake Challenge is created with the aim to promote cross-disciplinary geoscience and engineering integration within universities. Each participating university will have a multi-disciplinary team of full time geoscience and petroleum engineering students, with a maximum of one PhD student per team.