Tianjia Huang

Education

Texas A&M University, College Station, USA
PhD, Petroleum Engineering (08/2020 - 05/2025)
Advisor: Dr. George Moridis and Dr. Thomas Blasingame (NAE Member)
Dissertation: Parallelization of T+RealGasBrine for coupled processes in brine and real gas mixtures in geologic media, and particle transport extension of T+Hydrate for sand production analysis in gas-producing hydrate deposits
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China
M.Eng, Mechanical Engineering (08/2017 - 08/2020)
Advisor: Dr. Yu Zhang and Dr. Xiaosen Li
University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China
Non-Degree Coursework, Mechanical Engineering (08/2017 - 08/2018)
Xian Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China
B.Eng, Building Environmental and Energy Application Engineering (08/2013 - 08/2017)

Research Interests

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at Texas A&M University focused on solving subsurface energy challenges through high-performance computing. My research bridges theoretical numerical modeling and real-world applications for the energy transition. I develop parallelized simulation tools that extend the TOUGH software suite to model thermal-hydraulic-mechanical-chemical (THMC) dynamics. This work supports sustainable technologies including underground hydrogen storage, geologica hydrogen, geologic carbon sequestration, nuclear waste disposal, and geothermal energy.

Numerical modeling of coupled thermal-hydraulic-mechanical (THM) dynamics in subsurface environments
- Underground hydrogen storage in aquifers and depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs
- Geologic carbon storage in saline formations and natural gas reservoirs
- Geologic disposal of spent nuclear fuel
- Extraction of geologic hydrogen from rocks
- Geomechanical stability analysis in natural gas hydrate-bearing sediments using parallel TOUGH+HYDRATE+Reservoir GeoMechanics Simulator
- Three-dimensional discrete fracture network (DFN) modeling
Geochemical reactions in subsurface environments
- Mineral scaling and dissolution in enhanced geothermal systems
- Sensitivity analysis of reactive transport in fractured geothermal reservoirs
- Reactive transport modeling of geochemical interactions using TOUGHREACT
Numerical modeling of particle transport within porous media
- Sand production modeling in gas hydrate-bearing sediments
- Particulate flow modeling using the Discrete Element Method (DEM)
High-performance computing for complex simulations in petroleum science
- Code parallelization using MPI, OpenMPI, and CUDA
- Parallel performance analysis using the TAU performance system
- Code development within TOUGH2, TOUGH+, and TOUGH+FLAC3D

Work Experience

Postdoctoral Researcher at Texas A&M University, USA (07/2025 - Present)
Advisor: Dr. Birol Dindoruk (NAE Member) and Dr. Russell Johns (NAE Member)
Affiliate Student Intern at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA (08/2024 - Present)
Advisor: Dr. Jonny Rutqvist
Graduate Research Assistant at Texas A&M University, USA (08/2021 - Present)
Advisor: Dr. George Moridis and Dr. Thomas Blasingame (NAE Member)
Ingenuity Internship at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA (06/2024 - 08/2024)
Advisor: Dr. Jonny Rutqvist
Graduate Teaching Assistant at Texas A&M University, USA (01/2024 - 06/2024)
Advisor: Dr. Thomas Blasingame (NAE Member)
Ingenuity Internship at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA (06/2023 - 08/2023)
Advisor: Dr. Jonny Rutqvist
Internship at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, KSA (06/2022 - 08/2022)
Advisor: Dr. Bicheng Yan
Research Assistant at Peking University, China (09/2020 - 06/2021)
Advisor: Dr. Ke Xu