The Fault Analysis Group, a leading research group within the UCD School of Geological Sciences, has been presented with the NovaUCD 2010 Innovation Award. The award was presented to the group in recognition of its successes in the establishment of strategic and collaborative research links with global industry partners and in acknowledgement of its successful commercialisation activities.
The group, which includes 13 researchers, is one of the leading international teams studying the geological and engineering properties of faults and in applying its research outputs to solve practical problems encountered in hydrocarbon and mineral exploration and production activities.
Since 2000, when the group relocated from the University of Liverpool to University College Dublin, it has been awarded Eur6 million in research funding. This funding has been secured predominantly from industry partners, including British Gas, Shell, Statoil and Tullow Oil. The Fault Analysis Group has also received funding from Enterprise Ireland, IRCSET, Science Foundation Ireland and the European Union.
The group’s research output is embodied into software systems which have been licensed to Badley Geoscience, a leading UK software vendor, resulting in the joint development of commercial software products such as TransGen and TrapTester. The TransGen software system has become an industry-standard package. TransGen is routinely used by many of the world’s major oil companies to predict the impact of faults and to analyse the flow of hydrocarbons in geological reservoirs. The software licences have provided a significant royalty income to both UCD and the University of Liverpool. The most recent software package has generated royalties of Eur350,000 over the last number of years.