Miguel Angel Moyers González, Institute of Applied mathematics and Department of Mathematics, University of British Columbia:

Transient Effects in Oilfield Cementing Flows

Dr.  Miguel Angel Moyers González was awarded the 2005 Cecil Graham Doctoral Dissertation Award for his thesis Transient Effects in Oilfield Cementing Flows.  Dr. Moyers earned his doctorate at the University of British Columbia where his advisor was Ian Frigaard.

Dr. Moyers' work is notable for his ability to use first-class
mathematics to make a significant contribution to a real
industrial problem.  Miguel's thesis treated a problem of interest to the oil field services company Schlumberger.

Dr. Moyers was able to provide a solution to the problem of
cementing oil wells.  In this work he displayed an astonishing mastery of fluid mechanics, partial differential equations, and numerical methods. These tools allowed him to solve a very difficult problem in fluid dynamics -- a problem with complicated geometry, a moving interface, a non-Newtonian fluid, and even a time-varying forcing function.

As well as his sheer technical power, two things were evident from Dr. Moyer's thesis:  his modelling insights and his clear writing style.