
Doctoral Researcher (MPhil/PhD)
Duncan Grassie
Doctoral Researcher (MPhil/PhD)
UCL Energy Institute
duncan.grassie.16@ucl.ac.uk
Biography
I graduated in 2006 from Edinburgh University with my MSc (Hons) in Chemical Physics and Heriot-Watt University with an MSc in Petroleum Engineering and have spent the last 10 years working in the oil industry as a petroleum engineering consultant. My career so far has mainly involved building development scenario models for oil fields, designing well completions and artificial lift systems and developing bespoke software tools to extend the existing engineering capabilities of available software. I was fortunate to be able to work on new and mature fields in many locations including UK, Romania, UAE, China, Denmark, Norway and Indonesia and still maintain an interest in the industry.
For some time I have been aware of the decline in fossil fuel resources first hand and have been interested in determining whether our expectations of “what comes next” is realistic economically and behaviourally in a world approaching 10 billion people by 2050. For me this is the single most important question that needs to be answered in the world today. I hope to use my MRes to find out more about the feasibility of technology being able to keep up with this ever increasing demand and look forward to using my PhD research to develop modelling methods within the Lolo CDT coupling human behaviour with future technological and environmental challenges.