The San Joaquin Valley Section is proud to announce that Andrei Popa is the 2006 recipient of the SPE Outstanding Young Member Award for the Western North America Region. The Regional SPE Outstanding Young Member Award recognizes contributions to and leadership in public and community matters, the Society, the petroleum engineering profession, and/or the petroleum industry by SPE members under the age of 36. Popa was honored during the joint SPE/AAPG/GSA meeting in Anchorage at an awards luncheon held on 9 May.
Popa is currently the Program Chairperson for the San Joaquin Valley SPE Section and previously has served as Secretary and Activities Director. He has specialized expertise in artificial intelligence and data-mining applications to the petroleum industry and has authored or coauthored 13 SPE papers on the subject. Popa was a Technical Program Chairperson at the 2005 SPE Western Regional Meeting and has served as an SPE Student Paper Contest Judge twice. He also has been a guest speaker at Montana Tech’s SPE Spring Symposium and the U. of Southern California’s CiSoft program, as well as presented numerous papers at the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition and at regional SPE conferences.
Popa works for Chevron in Bakersfield, California, as an evaluation engineer for new development projects. He earned MS and PhD degrees in petroleum and natural gas engineering from West Virginia U. and a bachelor’s degree from the U. of Ploiesti in his home country of Romania.
Andrei Popa after winning his award. (Above)
