About

Egor Dontsov

Chief Scientist

Egor Dontsov is a scientist with over ten years of academic and industrial experience.

Prior to joining ResFrac, Egor worked at W.D. Von Gonten Laboratories, the University of Houston as Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the University of British Columbia as Postdoctoral Research and Teaching Fellow in the Mathematics Department. He earned his Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering at the University of Minnesota and Bachelor’s degree with honors in Physics at Novosibirsk State University.

Egor’s primary expertise area lies in theoretical and numerical modeling of hydraulic fracturing, proppant transport, and geomechanics. He has written and been exposed to the development of several academic and commercial simulators of hydraulic fracturing, proppant transport, and reservoir flow. Egor served as a reviewer for dozens of journals and several scientific proposals within and outside of the US, invited multiple times to give keynote lectures and seminars, as well as participated in organization of minisymposia at international conferences and workshops. Egor has published over fifty peer reviewed papers and received several awards, including Outstanding Technical Editor Service Award from SPE Journal in 2018, N.G.W. Cook award, as well as Best Dissertation award from University of Minnesota to name a few.

On the personal side, Egor leads an active lifestyle, and has climbed over 100 mountains. Over the last decade, he has also enjoyed cross-country skiing, running, mountain and road biking, hiking, and downhill and backcountry skiing. He has recently moved to triathlons. Within a single year, Egor finished his first ever triathlon – ironman distance, earned All World Athlete status, and qualified for US Triathlon National Championship.

Click here for a list of Egors’ publications.

Egor's posts

ResFrac at the Comrades Marathon in South Africa (an Ultramarathon)

Comrades Marathon is the world’s largest and oldest ultramarathon.  The first race was in 1921. The number of registrants for this year was capped at 20k.  The marathon runs from the city of Durban to Pietermaritzburg (“up” run) or in the other direction (“down” run). The “down” run is a little bit longer at around 90 km, while the  “up” run is 87 km. This year we did the “down” run, but it was shortened to 87.7 km or  54.5 miles. “15 minutes less of pleasure” – as one of my friends said. 

Read more

Recorded ARMA HFC 2023 Series Presentation– Optimization of Perforation Phasing for Improving Uniformity of Proppant Distribution Between Clusters

This ARMA Hydraulic Fracturing Community (HFC) presentation summarizes the work on proppant transport in horizontal perforated wellbores. Specifically, it discusses the model for proppant distribution between perforations depending on their orientation and location within the stage, optimal configurations are proposed, and performance is evaluated.

Read more

Optimization of perforation orientation for achieving uniform proppant distribution between clusters

Previously, a mathematical model for the problem of slurry flow in a perforated wellbore was described and the underlying physical mechanisms were discussed. The purpose of this blog post, on the other hand, is to couple the model with an optimization algorithm to investigate optimal perforation orientations that lead to the desired uniform proppant distribution between perforations. A brief description of the model is added at the beginning to cater for readers who are not familiar with the previous blog post.

Read more

Meet the ResFrac team

Learn why both independents and supermajors trust ResFrac

Search