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UH Subsea Engineering Director Pens OTC Commentary for FuelFix
By
Audrey Grayson
Subsea Engineering

Matthew Franchek, founding director of the UH Cullen College’s subsea engineering program, highlighted the dire need for big data analytics in deepwater oil and gas exploration in an OTC commentary published in FuelFix.

Franchek’s article, “Big data comes to deepwater drilling,” explores one of the major challenges of offshore exploration in ultra-deep water: Although almost all oilfield equipment have sensors and monitoring systems collecting terabytes of data from deep below the sea, methods to quickly analyze these enormous data sets are lagging behind.

Ideally, Franchek writes, oil and gas companies will soon by utilizing the industrial Internet of Things – that is, utilizing “smart” machines and big data analytics to continually capture real-time information on the status of the machinery hundreds of miles below the surface of the ocean.

That was the inspiration for the new Data Analytics for Condition and Performance Monitoring of Engineered Systems certificate offered by the UH Cullen College of Engineering, set to launch in fall of 2017. The new workforce program focuses on helping oil and gas producers more efficiently use and maintain equipment by making better use of the data streaming from monitoring sensors built into equipment.

“Companies lose billions of dollars because equipment went down unexpectedly,” said Franchek. “The industry needs a 21st century oil and gas workforce.”

The graduate certificate program is open to people with an undergraduate degree in any engineering discipline. The curriculum includes three courses for nine credit hours. The program is available both on campus and online.

For more information on the Data Analytics for Condition and Performance Monitoring of Engineered Systems certificate, please visit subsea.egr.uh.edu

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