UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Arash Dahi Taleghani, professor of petroleum and natural gas engineering at Penn State, will serve as a 2022-23 Society of Petroleum Engineers Distinguished Lecturer.

The SPE distinguished lecturer program seeks to provide outstanding speakers for the organization’s section meetings and to recognize the professional contributions of the distinguished lecturers, according to the society.

“SPE has about 100,000 members, and every year just a few dozen around the world are chosen to be a distinguished lecturer,” said Dahi Taleghani, who holds the Dr. Charles H. Bowman and Lynn A. Holleran Early Career Professorship in Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering in the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering. “It was an honor to be nominated and selected.”

Dahi Taleghani conducts research in reservoir geomechanics, geothermal, hydraulic fracturing, cementing and wellbore integrity at Penn State.

In recent work, he is investigating tapping into abandoned oil and gas wells in places like Pennsylvania and converting the wells to harvest geothermal heat, a renewable energy source. This research will be the topic of his planned SPE lectures in the Middle East, Europe and North America.

“I think it’s a great opportunity to spread the word that we can do something and be part of this movement for a meaningful transition to clean, renewable energies,” Dahi Taleghani said. “As we focus on this transition, we should have reasonable economic justifications, and this is one of the solutions that can have a very good justification.”

He earned a master's degree in civil engineering from Sharif University of Technology and his doctorate in petroleum engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.