Dr. Hussein Hoteit is professor and chair of the Earth Systems Science and Engineering (ESSE) Program at KAUST. His work spans reservoir engineering, multiphase fluid flow and reactive transport, with a present focus on energy-transition applications. Before joining KAUST in 2016, he spent about 15 years in the oil and gas industry at Reservoir Engineering Research Institute (RERI), ConocoPhillips (reservoir-simulation development, heavy-oil technology), and Chevron (unconventional resources, IOR/EOR). He has 150+ publications in the field, and has secured multiple external industry projects. He has served as an associate editor for SPE Journal, a focus area editor for JPT, and contributed to Mission Innovation’s Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) Program and Saudi Arabia’s Circular Carbon Economy National Program. He currently serves as a lead author for Chapter 15, “Potentials, Limits, and Risks of Carbon Dioxide Removal,” in the IPCC Working Group III, in the Seventh Assessment Report (AR7).

Prof. Hoteit’s research targets pore-to-field solutions for the energy transition, with emphasis on optimized hydrocarbon recovery, geological CO₂ sequestration and underground hydrogen storage. He investigates mineral, residual and solubility trapping, including accelerated carbon mineralization in basalts and cementitious materials, and wettability, sealing integrity and adsorption/diffusion processes. His group combines high-resolution experiments (microfluidics, mixed-wettability micromodels and core flooding) to advanced multiphysics modeling, augmented by data-driven machine learning for rapid prediction and uncertainty quantification. Current efforts integrate techno-economic assessment with basin-scale deployment pathways in Saudi Arabia to de-risk carbon capture and storage (CCS), carbon mineralization and H₂ storage.