Laaiba Akmal

Software Engineer

[email protected]

Laaiba Akmal is a software engineer at ResFrac, where she is responsible for assisting with software development and support.

Before joining ResFrac, Laaiba worked as a Graduate Research Assistant at the University of Texas at Austin. Her master’s thesis, Improved Subsurface Resource Prediction by Integrating Engineering Physics and Information Theory into Spatial Data Science Models, focused on innovative approaches to subsurface modeling. Her work explored topics such as new information theory measures for feature ranking and physics-based discrepancy modeling for well-log imputation. She also gained industry experience as a Reservoir Engineering and Data Science Intern at ExxonMobil, where she developed data-driven workflows and predictive models to support Type Curve construction in the Permian Basin.

Laaiba earned her Bachelor of Science in Petroleum Engineering (Highest Honors) and her Master of Science in Petroleum Engineering from UT Austin. Outside of work, she enjoys traveling, exploring nature, photography, and Pilates.

Laaiba's posts

Advanced ‘proppant transport in the well’ capabilities are now implemented in ResFrac!

Proppant transport in the well is an intriguing topic that has attracted a lot of interest in recent years [1-8]. Proppant transport processes determine the uniformity of proppant placement, which has a direct impact on productivity. Cipolla et al. estimate that the difference between poor and excellent proppant uniformity is about $2.5M in net present value per well.

Digesting the Bonkers, Incredible, Off-the-Charts, Spectacular Results from the Fervo and FORGE Enhanced Geothermal Projects

I’m out of superlatives – I used them all up in the title. But seriously – Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) projects have had a really, really good summer. In this article, I summarize the results that have been recently presented by Fervo and FORGE. At their annual Tech Day and in a white paper posted this week (Norbeck et al., 2024), Fervo Energy provided their first update on Project Cape, a Utah project where they are developing 400 MWe of new production over the next two years. So far, fourteen wells have been drilled, and three of them have been stimulated.

What ‘company culture’ means to us

We recently held our annual company retreat. This is an important event because we are a fully remote company, and it gives us the chance to get together in-person and spend quality time. This year, we did the retreat in Houston, following URTeC and our annual symposium. We visited Space Center Houston, went to an Astros game, and ate BBQ and Tex-Mex. As a Houston native, I picked some of my favorite things to do in town! We also held a meeting on ‘company culture.’ I asked the group – how do you perceive our company culture? What do we do well, and what could we do better? Here are the highlights.