Zach Aman ’09, PhD ’12

Zach Aman
Chevron Woodside Chair in Long Subsea Tiebacks
University of Western Australia
Perth, Australia

Zach received his B.Sc. (2009) and Ph.D. (2012) in Chemical Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines, where he completed his doctoral thesis at the Center for Hydrate Research; in his baccalaureate program, Zach was a member of the Guy T. McBride Jr. Honors Program in Public Affairs. During his time at Mines, Zach was an active member of the student body, as the Editor-in-Chief of The Oredigger newspaper (2007-2009), senator to ASCSM (2005-2011), member of the CSM Alumni Association Board of Directors (2008-2012), president of the CSM Graduate Student Association (2010-2012), and Director of Communications (2012) for the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students (NAGPS, with 400k members). During his time at Mines, Zach was heavily involved in creating a number of events and programmes throughout the university, including DeltaDays (2011), the Graduate Leadership Summit (2012), the Conference on Earth and Energy Research (2012), and the Mines Leadership Summit (2008-2010). Zach received the Alumnus of the Future award (2009) from the CSM Alumni Association, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Service Award (2009) from former CSM President Bill Scoggins.

Zach joined the University of Western Australia in 2013 as a Research Assistant Professor, initiating research streams in flow assurance for gas-condensate assets and subsea blowout management. His early efforts focussed on establishing new laboratory capability to support the growing LNG sector in the Asian-Pacific region, while emphasising technology streams that are compatible with Australia’s strict environmental standards. In the past three years, Zach and his co-workers have patented two chemical technologies with Chevron and Shell, which respectively inhibit the formation of mineral scales and hydrate deposits while being safe enough to drink.

In 2015, Zach was appointed as an Associate Professor (tenure-track), alongside holding affiliate faculty positions at Curtin University, CSIRO, and CSM. While at UWA, Zach has received over 50 individual grants as Chief Investigator totalling $14M AUD. With an early focus on establishing a postgraduate student cohort in the flow assurance space, Zach has supervised six PhD students to completion; he currently supervises four postdoctoral fellows, 13 PhD students, and two Masters students.

In 2019, Zach was promoted to Professor of Chemical Engineering with tenure, and was successfully appointed as the inaugural Chevron Woodside Chair in Long Subsea Tiebacks. In November of this year, he will open the Tiebacks Laboratory at UWA alongside Chevron and Woodside leadership, which will introduce new capacity designed to support operating companies in their vision of subsea tiebacks stretching between 150 and 300 kms from current tie-in points. For reference, recent IEA projections suggest that subsea tiebacks will become the development concept of choice through 2030, independent of the environmental policies adopted. In addition to the attractiveness in cost savings, tiebacks-centred development concepts provide a different lens for national security and environmental concerns, as most “subsea factories” are protected by 1000+ meters of the water column with 90% of ocean life distributed in the top 10 meters.

Zach also serves as the Program Chair of UWA’s Masters of Oil and Gas Engineering, and has developed 50% of the core curriculum in this programme; he currently teaches postgraduate units on Flow Assurance and Field Development, and undergraduate Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics. He received the 2015 Award for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning from the Engineering Faculty at UWA, largely based around his efforts in curriculum development. In 2017, Zach was honoured by the International Conference on Gas Hydrates (ICGH) International Scientific Committee through the Donald W. Davidson Award for outstanding contributions to hydrate research.