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Dr. Bo Zhang, PhD, PEng

Assistant Professor

Dr. Zhang is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Alberta and a registered professional engineer (P.Eng) in Canada.

He is the founder and principal investigator (PI) of the GeoCloud Research Group at the University of Alberta.

Currently, Dr. Zhang is supervising 4 post-doc fellow, 11 PhD students, 3 master students, 2 undergraduate students and 1 assistant researcher from geotechnical engineering, mining engineering, petroleum engineering, software engineering and computer science at University of Alberta.

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Meet the Team

Our brilliant team members in Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta

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Dr. Bo Zhang, PhD, PEng

Assistant Professor

Principle Investigator

Dr. Zhang is the founder and principal investigator (PI) for GeoResourceCloud Research Group at University of Alberta. Over the last three years, Dr. Zhang has been awarded over 5 million CAD research grants and published over 40 journals on GeoResource releated research.

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Dr. Gamze Erdogan Erten

Postdoctoral Researcher

Co-supervised with Jeff Boisvert

Her research focuses on optimizing well control, including the number of injection wells, their locations, and injection rates for carbon capture and storage (CCS) using surrogate model-based deep reinforcement learning.

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Dr. Yiding Sun

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Also works in Occupational Ergonomics Research Lab

Her research focuses on developing an agent-enabled, AI-driven integration framework that advances digital transformation in subusurface energy development, including CO2 storage, geothermal systems and oil and gas industry.

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Dr. Chao Yu

Postdoctoral Researcher

His research focus on development and utilization of Geothermal resources, including 1)numerical simulation of coupled THMC model, 2)experimental and simulation study on the mechanism of heat transfer in complex fractures, and 3)evaluation, optimization and decision-makings in geothermal system.

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Xuehan Yin

PhD Student

As a PhD student majoring in civil engineering, she has a background in geotechnical engineering, rock mechanics, and rock dynamics and research interests revolve around developing simulations of subsurface energy developments through the coupling DEM-FEM methods.

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Oumaima Arfaoui

PhD Student

After finishing her Mitacs Globalink Research Intern, Oumaima will continue as a PhD student at the University of Alberta working on geothermal system developments.

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Arqam Muqtadir

PhD Student

As a highly enthusiastic and motivated PhD student, he has worked as a Researcher at King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), Saudi Arabia, for a period of five years (2018 to 2023) prior to joining UofA in January 2023. He mainly focus on research in the area of Reservoir Geomechanics.

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Aodi Liu

PhD student

Aodi Liu is a PhD student specializing in physics-informed machine learning, surrogate modeling, and LLMs for subsurface energy systems. His research covers reservoir simulation, production and pressure prediction, automated history matching, and AI-enabled petroleum engineering.

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Yixuan Li

PhD Student

As a PhD student in geotechnical engineering, Yixuan has a background in urban underground space engineering, rock mechanics, and shale gas development. In her previous research, she focused on methane deflagration fracturing impact on shale micro-structure and permeability.

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Jia Liu

PhD Student

Jia is a PhD student majoring in civil engineering. He has a background in geotechnical engineering, which specialized in simulation for salt cavern storage and has conducted studies on it. His future research focuses on the simulation for underground hydrogen storage (UHS).

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Liang Xin

PhD student

Liang is a PhD student in mining and geotechnical engineering. His research focuses on intelligent mining-safety monitoring using FBG sensing, UAV mapping, numerical modeling, and digital twins, with applications to slope stability, deformation monitoring, risk assessment, and early warning.

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Walid Ben Saleh

PhD Student

As a PhD student, his research focus reservoir modeling and characterization, reservoir geomechanics, hydraulic fracturing and quantifying the geomechanical and geological uncertainties in Carbon storage simulation models by developing innovative data-driven models and data assimilation workflows.

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Bingyu Xie

PhD Student

Co-supervised with Rick Chalaturnyk

As a PhD student, her research focuses on investigating the hydro-geomechanical characterization and permeability evolution of Inclined Heterolithic Stratification (IHS) in McMurry formation. This study aims to provide essential parameters for reservoir system simulations and enhance the efficiency.

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Debastuti Ghosh

PhD Student

Co-supervised with Jeff Boisvert

As a PhD Student, she has completed her Bachelor's from Presidency University, India, in 2016 and her first Master's from IIT (ISM) Dhanbad, India, in 2019, both in Applied Geology. She worked at Schlumberger as a petrophysicist for the North American team and received her second Master's from IPGP.

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Georgios Tsekeris

PhD Student

Co-supervised with Clayton Deutsch

As a Master's student, his research focus on Geostatistical Modeling considering High-Resolution Stratigraphic Models. In 2023, along with his supervisor and co-supervisor, Dr. Zhang Bo, he published a Lesson titled "Categorical Variable Distributions in Geostatistics" on GeostatisticsLessons.com.

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Reine Akchr

MSc Student

As a MSc student in civil and geotechnical engineering with a background in petroleum engineering, she studies Enhanced Geothermal Systems in Precambrian basement rocks, integrating field data, THM modeling, and prior FES research on petrophysics and geothermal potential.

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Muhammad Farooq Zia

MSc Student

As a PhD Student, his research interests include modeling and simulation of transport phenomena in porous media. He is currently working on uncertainty quantification in subsurface CO2 storage, and value of information framework that are essential to large-scale CCUS decision-making.

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Raahim Khan

Research Assistant and Casual Software Engineer

Raahim Khan is a third-year Computer Science student at the University of Alberta and a data scientist in our team. He’s building the Geology agent to analyze subsurface data and create subsurface model.

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Usaid Ahmed

Research Assistant and Casual Software Engineer

Usaid Ahmed is a Research Assistant on the Geo-Resource Agent platform, where he designs the multi-agent orchestration architecture and enhances the frontend. He is also integrating the Production Agent, strengthening its analytical tools, and linking production data to economic metrics.

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Yang Su

Visiting PhD student

A PhD student in structural geology and clastic sedimentology, she specializes in the quantitative characterization of ultra-deep reservoirs through multi-well log integration.

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Alishbah Bashir

Mitacs Globalink Research Intern

Alishbah is a Mitacs intern working on methane emission agent.

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Yassine Yahyaoui

Mitacs Globalink Research Intern

Yassine is a Mitacs intern specializing in LLMs, agentic AI, RAG, machine learning, and scientific AI. His research focuses on reservoir inversion from monitoring data using backpropagation through differentiable machine-learning models.

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Yaoyao Sun

Visiting PhD student


Yaoyao focuses on: (1) Acid fracturing stimulation in ultra-deep fractured-cavity carbonate reservoirs;
(2) Fracture initiation and propagation in radial wellbore-controlled fracturing;
(3) Hydraulic jetting acid fracturing for ultra-deep tight carbonates with reduced breakdown pressure

Alumni

Our brilliant team alumni

Xiaoyan Ou

MSc Student

Now at Thurber Engineering Ltd.

As a MSc student major in Civil Engineering specified in Geotechnical Engineering, her work focuses on the Coupled Flow-Geomechanics Upscaling techniques of predicting the soil strength parameters of the heterogeneous McMurray formation (Oil Sands) with the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN).

Shuxin Qiao

Research Assistant

Now at Singapore LNG

As a research assistant, he is responsible for: 1) the implementation of data science in subsurface energy development Including CO2 THMC coupled flow migration with a focus in building proxy model by Deep Learning methods and 2) development of related software and frontend.

Richao Cong

Visiting PhD Student

His research focuses on the geomechanical properties and fracture propagation mechanisms of thin interbeds in coal measure strata. He is proficient in grid nanoindentation tests, SEM-EDS techniques, conventional geomechanical tests, and the finite-discrete element combined method (FDEM).

Xiaoxue Jiang

Visiting PhD Student

PhD student researching geothermal resource exploration and development. Her work focuses on heat flow, lithospheric structure, and reservoir conditions to understand high-temperature geothermal systems, improve assessment methods, and guide sustainable resource utilization.


Zhaowen Hu

Visiting PhD Student

Visiting Ph.D. student from China Univ. of Petroleum–Beijing researching advanced drilling tools to boost performance, safety & cost-effectiveness. Focus: 1) Energy-Gathered Nesting Plugging for lost circulation; 2) Vortex Cuttings Cleaner for wellbore cleaning efficiency.

Xinruo Ma

Visiting PhD Student

Visiting PhD student from China Univ. of Petroleum–Beijing researching hydrocarbon accumulation models controlled by faults & overpressure. Interests: (1) pore pressure prediction, (2) quantitative fault activity, (3) fault–paleo-pressure evolution & its impact on hydrocarbon migration.

Heng Yang

Visiting PhD Student

Visiting PhD student from China Univ. of Petroleum (Beijing) researching: (1) intelligent analysis/control of lost circulation; (2) real-time & ahead-of-bit prediction of rock properties; (3) intelligent decision-making software for drilling

Guopeng Huang

Visiting PhD Student

Guopeng focuses on (1) competitive Propagation Mechanism of Multi- Fractures in Fractured Reservoirs;
(2) Longitudinal propagation mechanism and control method of hydraulic fractures under multi-layered superposed formations;

Yaopeng Ji

Visiting PhD Student

As a visiting PhD student at the University of Alberta from Jilin University, He is focusing on the disaster-causing mechanisms of high-stress, deeply incised river valleys in the southeastern Tibetan Plateau.

Xiaozhou Qin

Visiting PhD Student

As a visiting PhD student from China University of Petroleum (Beijing), her research focus the stress evolution and permeability enhancement mechanism of multistage cavity completion in coalbed methane horizontal wells.

Xinyu Zhuang

Visiting PhD Student

As a visiting PhD student from the China University of Petroleum (East China), his research primarily covers: (1) CO₂ flooding and geological sequestration, (2) Intelligent prediction and optimization, and (3) numerical simulation of wellbore-reservoir coupling mechanisms.

Nouha Dhifi

Mitacs Globalink Research Internship

Nouha Dhifi is a Mitacs Research Intern in our group working on hybrid CO₂–water geothermal systems. She is currently pursuing an engineering degree in Energy and Environmental Technology at the National Engineering School of Gafsa, Tunisia.

Mingsheng Liu

Visiting PhD Student

As a visiting PhD student from China University of Petroleum. His research interests covers 1) Supercritical CO2 fracturing of unconventional reservoirs, 2) Fluid mechanics and jet simulation, 3) Numerical simulation of fracture initiation and propagation by FEM/FDEM.

Peng Xu

Visiting PhD Student

As a visiting PhD student from the China University of Petroleum (Beijing). His research focuses on the mechanism of abrasive water jet rock perforation and its influence on fracture initiation. His research interests covers several topics.

Zekai Tang

Visiting PhD Student

PhD student with background in Petroleum Eng., Reservoir Simulation & Advanced Fluid Mechanics in Porous Media. His research consists of numerical modeling of CO₂ burial in depleted shale gas reservoirs, focusing on THM coupling & multi-physics simulations in complex 3D fracture networks.

Yaxin Shang

Visiting PhD Student

As a visiting PhD student from China University of Petroleum(East China), her research focus the combination of water-rock reaction software (Tough react) and geological modeling software (Petrel) to explore the potential of sandstone gas reservoirs for geological storage or enhanced gas recovery.

Huayan Mu

Visiting PhD Student

Visiting PhD student from China Univ. of Petroleum (Beijing). Her research applies information & intelligent technologies in oil & gas engineering, focusing on: (1) predicting wellbore lost circulation risk; (2) identifying key characteristics such as location, pressure & fracture size.

Mingzhe Gu

Visiting PhD Student

As a visiting PhD student from China University of Petroleum. His research interests covers 1) Hydraulic fracturing of unconventional reservoirs, 2) Micromechanical characterization of unconventional reservoirs, 3) Numerical Simulation of fracture propagation by FEM/DEM/FDEM.

Arpita Gajanan Joshi

Undergraduate Research Intern

As a dual degree student (B.Tech + M.Tech) at the Indian Institute of Technology and intern researcher at University of Alberta, her research focus on inverse modeling of CO2 plume dynamics to predict subsurface permeability and the application of machine learning in energy systems.

Yicheng Pan

Undergraduate Research Intern

As a Mitacs summer intern, Yicheng Pan came as one of the top students in Tsinghua University, which has brought him a solid mathematical and scientific foundation. Pan has demonstrated a strong academic performance and a keen interest in the realm of energy policy.

Vaniya Tariq

Undergraduate Research Intern

As a Intern Researcher, she completed her second year of undergraduate studies in Computer Software Engineering Cooperative Program and had the incredible learning opportunity to work on the CCUS web application platform alongside PhD and Postdoc students within the group as a DRA student.

Brayan Farid Aguilar Rubial

Undergraduate Research Intern

As an ELAP research intern undergraduate student from Universidad Industrial de
Santander, his research focused on the estimation of the recovery factor by the implementation of carbon dioxide as a product of trigeneration through numerical simulation of reservoirs (GEM and Winprop).

HsuanHsi Chen

Undergraduate Research Intern

As Mitacs summer intern, HsuanHsi came as one of the top students in National Taiwan University. Her research project focus on developing an LLM-powered agent platform with full stack toolchain. Her plan includes design and implement backend server with communication and buildup economy agent.

Faculty of Engineering

Civil & Environmental Engineering Department

GeoResourceCloud Research Group

Contact us

Bo Zhang, PhD, P.Eng

Email

bzhang7@ualberta.ca

Address

6-239 Donadeo Innovation Centre For Engineering

9211 116 St, Edmonton, AB
T6G 2H5

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