Dr. Baojun Bai, a Curators’ Distinguished Professor of petroleum engineering at Missouri S&T, was recently honored with the Improved Oil Recovery (IOR) Pioneer Award from the Society of Petroleum Engineers at the 2024 IOR Conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Since its inception in 1984, 94 recipients have been selected for the honor, which Dr. Randy Seright, chair of the IOR Pioneer Award Committee, describes as a lifetime achievement award and “the most coveted honor in the field of improved oil recovery.”

Bai has more than 25 years of experience researching water production control, enhanced oil recovery, unconventional reservoir development, carbon storage and geothermal energy. He is known across his industry as the creator of preformed particle gels for conformance control that have been used in over 10,000 wells and are now considered industry-standard technology.

“I feel an immense amount of pride and appreciation to be included with these 93 other individuals who have made such remarkable contributions related to oil recovery,” Bai says. “This is easily one of the most recognized awards for the people who work in my field, and it means a great deal to me.”

Bai joined the Missouri S&T faculty in 2006 as an assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 2011 and professor in 2015. Last year, he was awarded the title of Curators’ Distinguished Professor. He also holds S&T’s Lester Birbeck Endowed Chair of petroleum engineering and is director of the university’s Preformed Particle Gel Conformance Control Industrial Consortium.

Before coming to S&T, Bai was a postdoctoral fellow in California Institute of Technology’s chemistry and chemical engineering division. He also served as a petroleum engineer and laboratory director for PetroChina’s Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration and Development (RIPED) in Beijing, China.

Bai has published over 260 peer-reviewed journal articles and delivered more than 150 presentations at national and international conferences.

He earned a Ph.D. in petroleum engineering from New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, a Ph.D. in petroleum geology from China University of Geosciences, a master’s degree in petroleum engineering from the Graduate School of RIPED in PetroChina, and a bachelor’s degree in reservoir engineering from Daqing Petroleum Institute in Heilongjiang, China.

For more information about Missouri S&T’s petroleum engineering programs, visit ggpe.mst.edu.

About Missouri S&T

Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) is a STEM-focused research university of over 7,000 students located in Rolla, Missouri. Part of the four-campus University of Missouri System, Missouri S&T offers over 100 degrees in 40 areas of study and is among the nation’s top public universities for salary impact, according to the Wall Street Journal. For more information about Missouri S&T, visit www.mst.edu.