Research is: mostly persistence.

Daniel Cartagena Pérez joined [RG]2 for his MSc mid-pandemic. He was one of the international students the research group helped find temporary quarantine accommodations before being able to begin their studies. His request for what to put in the fridge of his AirBnB? Some fruit and veg, maybe some cheese, and definitely some Canadian beer. No problem. Finding an embroidery business that hadn’t folded due to COVID-19 to update nametags? We made do. In this instance, “KEVIN” should be pronounced “DANIEL.”

Daniel wrapped up his MSc in 2024, heading south to Calgary where he now works as a Geomechanics Reservoir Engineer at Suncor. These days, his job is to ask uncomfortable questions of thermal operations using geomechanical numerical simulations—specifically, where things might go wrong, why, and how to see it coming. It’s not a dramatic pivot from graduate school so much as a continuation, just with less academic patience for hand-waving.

His thesis tackled the physical modeling of CO₂ cyclic solvent injection (CO₂-CSI) in post-CHOPS reservoirs, a topic that lives squarely at the intersection of theory, experimentation, and stubborn reality. It’s also what he points to as his biggest professional accomplishment to date—not because it was elegant, but because it worked. More importantly, it trained him to treat uncertainty as a feature, not a flaw, a mindset he now carries into real-world reservoir decisions where mistakes don’t stay on paper.

Choosing [RG]2 was easy. Geomechanics in thermal operations had been a long-standing interest, and working with Professor Chalaturnyk sealed the deal. The group’s culture rewarded depth over speed and skepticism over shortcuts. For Daniel, it was a place where asking better questions mattered more than producing fast answers—an increasingly rare luxury in both academia and industry.

An impressive number of his memories are tied to the centrifuge lab, and to the people who made it function, particularly Dmytro Pantov and Yazhao Wang. The centrifuge was less a machine and more a lesson in humility. Daniel learned quickly that a new idea doesn’t become useful just because it’s clever. It becomes useful only after repetition, failure, recalibration, and an uncomfortable amount of patience. Innovation, as it turns out, is mostly persistence.

Along the way, Daniel collected a series of awards that quietly signal competence without demanding too much attention. These include the Graduate Student Research Excellence Award and the N.R. Morgenstern Student Award from the University of Alberta, as well as the FGSR Travel Award, the InterPore 2023 Conference Grant, and Geoconvention 2023 Student Travel Assistance. Earlier recognitions—such as the Excellence Award of the Practice Track at the Competition on Energy and Climate Change, the Ecopetrol Award for Innovation, and an award for the best undergraduate thesis in petroleum engineering—round out the list. He treats them less as milestones and more as confirmation that slow, careful work still gets noticed.

Survival during graduate school came down to routine. Daniel swam every day. No exceptions. It was the one hour where equations, deadlines, and reviewer comments were not allowed. What he looked forward to most about finishing wasn’t a title or a job—it was the end of exams and evaluations, and the quiet relief of no longer performing understanding on demand.

Edmonton left its mark. He misses the River Valley and the west pool, both of which became anchors during long, mentally crowded stretches. One surprise near the end of his degree was how often he found himself reopening the same textbooks. The pages hadn’t changed, but he had. Mastery, it turns out, looks a lot like repetition with better questions.

Ask Daniel about work–life balance and he doesn’t talk about hacks or optimization. He talks about sleep. It’s non-negotiable. Full stop. A quote that still follows him is Sapere Aude!—“Dare to know”—which he once signed off in emails and still quietly lives by. If he could advise his younger self, it would be to read more and listen to more music—both are better teachers than they get credit for.

And of course I need to ask if he has a favourite dinosaur. He does: the plesiosaurus. Not for its size or teeth, but because its fossils helped give rise to dragon myths across cultures. People found something strange beneath the surface and did their best to explain it. Daniel finds that instinct—confronting the unknown with imagination and effort—deeply familiar.

Looking forward requires looking both ahead and back. For those in the know, these selected papers and presentations say more than words.

Papers

• Alzate-Espinosa, G. A., de Jesús Naranjo-Agudelo, A., Felipe Araujo-Guerrero, E., Andrés Torres-Hernández, C., Herrera-Schlesinger, M. C., Benítez-Peláez, C. A., … Higuita-Carvajal, E. F. (2024). Applied Geomechanics for the Analysis and Optimization of Cyclic Steam Stimulation Operations in Heavy Oil Reservoirs. https://doi.org/10.52305/UGEA7864
•   Cartagena-Pérez, D., Rangriz Shokri, A., & Chalaturnyk, R. (2025). Recent Developments in the CO2-Cyclic Solvent Injection Process to Improve Oil Recovery from Poorly Cemented Heavy Oil Reservoirs: The Case of Canadian Reservoirs. Energies, 18(11), 2728.https://doi.org/10.3390/en18112728
• Cartagena-Pérez, D. F., Alzate-Espinosa, G. A., & Arbelaez-Londoño, A. (2022). Conceptual evolution and practice of sand management. Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering, 210. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.petrol.2021.110022
• Herrera-Schlesinger, M. C., Cartagena-Pérez, D. F., Torres-Hernández, C. A., Araujo-Guerrero, E. F., Alzate-Espinosa, G., Benitez-Pelaez, C. A., … Burgoa-Suarez, L. O. (2021). Sets of stress path as a strategy to study efficiently the geomechanical trending behavior in CSS projects. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 833(1). https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/833/1/012182
• Cartagena-Pérez, D.F. et al. (2018) “A Modified Model to Describe Porosity-Temperature Relationship” Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering. Vol. 168 pp.301-309 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.petrol.2018.04.067

Presentations

• Cartagena-Pérez, D., Rangriz-Shokri, A., Zambrano, G., & Chalaturnyk, R. (2024). Mechanical and Hydraulic Characterization of 3D Printed Rock Analogues of Poorly Cemented Sandstone. 58th US Rock Mechanics/Geomechanics Symposium. Golden, Colorado: American Rock Mechanics Association – ARMA.
• Cartagena-Pérez, D., Rangriz-Shokri, A., Zambrano, G., Pantov, D., Wang, Y., Chalaturnyk, R., & Hawkes, C. (2024). Scaled Physical Modeling Of Cyclic CO2 Injection In Unconsolidated Heavy Oil Reservoirs Using Geotechnical Centrifuge And Additive Manufacturing Technologies. SPE Canadian Energy Technology Conference and Exhibition. Calgary, Alberta: Society of Petroleum Engineers
• Cartagena-Pérez, D. F., Rangriz-Shokri, A., Zambrano–Narvaez, G., Pantov, D., Wang, Y., Hawkes, C., & Chalaturnyk, R. (2023). Geotechnical Centrifuge Modeling of Multiphase Flow and Geomechanics Aspects in Shallow Unconsolidated Heavy Oil Reservoirs. Gussow. Banff, Alberta.
• Cartagena-Pérez, D., Rangriz-Shokri, A., Zambrano–Narvaez, G., Pantov, D., Wang, Y., Hawkes, C., & Chalaturnyk, R. (2023). Investigation of Geomechanical Issues during CO2 Injection in CHOPS Reservoirs using a Geotechnical Centrifuge. EOR Technical Collaboration Program. Calgary, Alberta.
• Cartagena-Pérez, D., Rangriz Shokri, A., Zambrano, G. & Chalaturnyk, R. (2023). Scaled Physical Modeling of CO₂ Cyclic Injection Process in A Heterogeneous Unconsolidated Sandstone Formation using Additive Manufacturing and Geotechnical Centrifuge Technologies. 15th Annual International Conference on Porous Media. Edinburgh.
• Cartagena-Pérez, D., Rangriz Shokri, A., Pantov, D., Wang, Y., Zambrano, G., Hawkes, C., & Chalaturnyk, R. (2023). Geotechnical Centrifuge Modeling of CO₂ EOR in CHOPS Reservoirs. GeoConvention 2023. Calgary.
• Alzate-Espinosa, G. A., Araujo-Guerrero, E. F., Benítez-Peláez, C. A., Herrera-Schlesinger, M. C., Torres-Hernández, C. A., Higuita-Carvajal, E., … Cartagena-Pérez, D. F. (2021). Assessment of the impact of stress path and strain-dependent permeability on reservoir productivity in CSS. ARMA/DGS/SEG 2nd International Geomechanics Symposium. Retrieved from https://onepetro.org/armaigs/proceedings-abstract/IGS21/All-IGS21/ARMA-IGS-21-077/473046
• Araujo-Guerrero, E., Alzate-Espinosa, G., Cross-Arroyave, Y., Vega-Niño, Y. P., Cartagena-Pérez, D. F., & Naranjo-Agudelo, A. J. (2021). A new methodology for selecting sand control or sand management as strategy in wells with sand production potential.  9th International Symposium on Geomechanics (pp. 1–13). Retrieved from https://onepetro.org/ISRMISG/proceedings/ISG21/All-ISG21/ISRM-ISG-2021-01/469134
• Alzate-Espinosa, G. A., Naranjo-Agudelo, A. J., Araujo-Guerrero, E. F., Torres-Hernández, C. A., Cartagena-Pérez, D. F., Benítez-Peláez, C. A., … Higuita-Carvajal, E. F. (2021). Assessment of the effect of Cyclic Steam Stimulation ( CSS ) operational variables on well productivity including geomechanical modeling. 9th International Symposium on Geomechanics, 1–10. Retrieved from https://onepetro.org/ISRMISG/proceedings/ISG21/All-ISG21/ISRM-ISG-2021-03/469133