Vasudevan Sampath

Vasudevan Sampath received his Ph.d. from University of Tulsa (Mechanical Engineering), his dissertation title was “Intelligent control of compact multiphase separation systems”. He received his M.S degree also from University of Tulsa and his thesis title was “Adaptive Control for Gas-Liquid Cylindrical Cyclone Separator”. He received his B.E. Degree in Mechanical Engineering from University of Madras in 1995 where he was honored by a silver medal (2^nd rank) for his outstanding academic performance during the four year undergraduate program. He has worked on Marine machinery for three years where he developed expertise in IC engines, Refrigeration and air conditioning systems, Electro-Hydraulic and Pneumatic systems used onboard ships. He has worked as a technical manager for ESSAR ship management company, the second largest ship Owner in India, managing four 38,000 DWT bulk carriers. He has worked on adaptive control applications for GLCC and has special interests in instrumentation and process control systems in oil industry. He has authored papers in the field of Adaptive control applications for GLCC which has been published in Instrumentation Society of America magazines. He has developed a new intelligent control system using fuzzy logic approach for improving efficiency of compact modular multiphase separation systems. He has expertise in designing and developing dynamic process simulator in Matlab/Simulink for predicting the performance of various multiphase separation devices, sensors and control systems.

Vasu has recently (Jan, 2006) accepted a position with Chevron Energy Technology Company (ETC) in Houston as Wax and Rheology Specialist. Initially he will be supervising the Chevron in-house laboratory flow loop studies concerning “Cold Flow”. Cold Flow refers to intentional creation and production line shipping of precipitated solids such as asphaltenes, hydrates and paraffins. Cold Flow intends to solve pipeline plugging by avoiding adherence of precipitates to a pipeline wall.