Alon Mandel

Noble Energy
Production Engineer

Education

University of Michigan, BSE Chemical Engineering 2010
Tel Aviv University, MA Political Sciences, 2013
Tel Aviv University, MSc Environmental Engineering, 2014
HAZOP certified leader- Process Hazards Analysis for Team Leaders

Career Summary

I worked at the Center for Risk Analysis in Tel Aviv, Israel, performing quantitative risk analyses involving multiple differing categories: air pollution, blast effect, toxicology, and process safety. In 2014, I began working for Noble Energy in Denver, CO, estimating VOC (volatile organic compound) emissions in oil and gas production facilities and developed recommendations for best practices to improve the procedures used to collect and pressurize hydrocarbons.

I have served as a facilities engineer of two cryogenic gas processing plants, a production engineer for an offshore gas platform and has worked on a variety of projects and an environmental engineer using modeling to perform risk analysis. I have worked designing vapor control systems and blast-proof control rooms, validating Pressure-Safety-Valves, optimizing natural gas liquids recovery, and performing technical analysis at a gas platform offshore in Israel.

My career highlight is the fact that one of the research projects I was working on was fully endorsed by the EPA on a national scale, which is applied already today throughout the entire oil and gas industry (2017).

Career Timeline
• Noble Energy
• Center for Risk Analysis at Tel Aviv, Israel

What excites you about your career?

The ability to work on projects all the way from the theoretical level to the actual implementation.

To develop new empirical correlations that have the ability to challenge old ones.

Time spent at U-M

I liked the fact that most classes give emphasis on group work. Suggestions to improve include the increase of exposure to the oil and gas industry throughout the core ChE courses given its global importance – from environmental aspect to improved design and enhanced process safety.

Favorite Student Organizations
Varsity men’s swimming and diving team (2006-2010)

Favorite Classes
Thermodynamics (330) and senior design project (487), since I was able to integrate all I have learned together.

Favorite Events
Athletically, winning the Big Ten team title in swimming in Ann Arbor was one of the best moments of my life while at U of M.

Advice to Students
Don’t aim for a specific class grade, but rather try to understand the class concepts, boil every subject down to terminology that you can understand using real-life examples. If you are able to clearly explain yourself to your colleagues in a few minutes, you know the material better than memorizing equations.

What do you like to do outside of work?

Spend time with my wife and daughter, swim in the pool and the ocean (completed the swim from Spain to Morocco in 2015).