Missouri S&T’s PetroBowl team has punched its ticket to compete at the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) PetroBowl Championship event in Houston during the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition in October.  
 
The PetroBowl Regional Qualifier for teams from the United States, Canada and Mexico was held last month during the 2025 North America Student Symposium at the University of Southern California, and S&T was the top-placing U.S. group and came in second overall out of 22 teams. 
 
PetroBowl is a quiz competition for students in which each participant has a buzzer to press to answer technical and nontechnical questions relevant to the petroleum industry and engineering. 
 
“I couldn’t be prouder of our team and the success we had at regionals,” says Abdul Mujeeb, a master’s degree student in petroleum engineering from Ghana. “When we first started, we felt a little intimidated since this was our first competition, but then we kept winning and winning, and it was clear all of our efforts were going to pay off.” 
 
Mujeeb says this was S&T’s first time competing in PetroBowl since 2018, and he hopes this year’s success will reignite S&T students’ interest in showing their knowledge on the international stage. 
 
“When I saw students from other universities competing in SPE’s PetroBowl Championship last year, I realized this was something we could do,” he says, “and with the intelligence and dedication of students in our petroleum engineering programs, I thought we could do it quite well.”  
 
Makuach James Makeny, a Ph.D. student in petroleum engineering from South Sudan and the team’s coach, says he was enthusiastic about this possibility as well since he has been involved with SPE for over 15 years and has previous experiences with PetroBowl.  
 
However, after the students were given the OK to proceed with forming a team, Makeny learned he could not compete since he is a professional member of the organization and worked as a petroleum engineer in South Sudan and Malaysia before beginning his Ph.D. studies at S&T. 
 
“But it all worked out because I was able to train the team instead,” says Makeny. “I was able to share my knowledge and enjoyment of the competition, and I developed a training regimen and strategies to ensure S&T would be ready to win. They all worked hard, and now we have even more excitement for the team since we qualified for the championship.” 
 
Other members of the team include Sulaiman Bah, of Sierra Leone; Nikhil Chodipilli, of India; Ahmed Al-Hlaichi, of Iraq; and Abhinav Medithi, of India.  
 
All of the current participants are master’s degree students in petroleum engineering, but Makeny says he wants undergraduate students to feel welcome and consider joining as well. 
 
For more information about Missouri S&T’s petroleum engineering programs, visit ese.mst.edu/academic-programs/petroleum-engineering. 

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.