Maria A. Barrufet holds the Baker Hughes Endowed Chair of Petroleum Engineering. She is the Director of Distance Learning Program in Petroleum Engineering, Assistant Department head for Administration, and an Adjunct Professor of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University.

Maria's research interests include:

• Integration of capillary pressure and thermodynamics to evaluate properties of confined reservoir fluids.


• Reservoir simulation of near-critical fluids. Hydrocarbon characterization methods. Simplified methods to model gravitational gradients in compositional reservoir simulation.


• Equations of state (EOS) for multiphase equilibria. Liquid-liquid-vapor equilibrium in steam flooding processes and solid-liquid-gas equilibria in asphaltene and wax precipitation.


• Enhanced oil recovery: thermodynamics and transport phenomena applied to chemical, miscible, and thermal recovery processes.


• Analytical and numerical modeling of CO2 storage and capture.


• Rock and fluid properties: correlation and measurement of capillary pressures and relative permeabilities, polymer and gel rheology for profile modification and water control.


• Electron beam upgrading of heavy oil and radiation thermal cracking.


• Reverse osmosis and desalination technologies to process oilfield brines.

Maria holds a Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering from Texas A&M University, a Master's degree in Chemical Engineering from Universidad Nacional del Sur (Argentina), and a Bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from Universidad Nacional de Salta (Argentina).