Yilin Fan named inaugural Thorson Distinguished University Chair

Yilin Fan, PhD, associate professor of minerals and subsurface energy and an innovator in production engineering, has been named the inaugural J. Don and Lois Thorson Distinguished Endowed Chair.

The Thorson Chair honors an outstanding faculty member who is at the forefront of education and research in the field of production engineering with a five-year appointment and funding for professional development. Production engineering, which governs how fluids move from reservoir to surface, is a core area of petroleum engineering.

“I am truly excited and honored to receive this chair,” said Fan, director of the petroleum engineering graduate program. “It acknowledges what I have accomplished and, more importantly, supports what I hope to accomplish in the future for our students, for Mines, and for industry.”

Jennifer Miskimins MS ’00, PhD ’02, interim chair of the School of Minerals and Subsurface Energy, said Fan was the perfect candidate.

“Yilin is a phenomenal production engineer who fits the Thorson Chair’s description perfectly,” Miskimins said. “She singlehandedly developed and upgraded our production teaching lab while running a robust research program of her own. It’s been great for our students’ education.”

Fan said the Thorsons have opened up new opportunities for advancing production research and technical capabilities and enhancing education, especially through the petroleum production teaching lab.

“Because of their generosity, I am confident that we’ll continue to strengthen Mines’ long-term reputation for production engineering,” she said.

Large-scale investment in production engineering

Yilin Fan meets with Don Thorson '55 Don Thorson ’55 and his wife, Lois, are among Mines’ most loyal supporters. Through decades of philanthropy and hands-on involvement, they have helped transform the Mines student experience by supporting multidisciplinary learning, innovation and student communities. At 93, he continues to volunteer as a judge for the Capstone Design Competition. On Sept. 30, 2026, he was awarded the Mines Medal for his distinguished, exemplary and sustained service to Mines.

Thorson understands oil production intimately. He grew up working in his father’s bentonite mining company, Black Hills Bentonite, and oil company, Toco. After attending Mines and completing two years in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, he made a 35-year career out of buying and salvaging existing oil production sites and equipment.

“Oil and gas was my passion, especially working with my hands,” he said. “I love to build things, so if we needed a piece of equipment in the field, I would try to build it first before I would buy it. That’s why I decided to do a chair that would support production engineering at Mines.”

Miskimins said large-scale investment in production engineering has been an overlooked core area at Mines.

“This gift is a major investment that will do a wonderful job of solidifying this critical area in petroleum engineering and other subsurface energy areas for years to come,” she said. “It will help Yilin create an even bigger impact on students and expand her research program into new areas of energy.”

Fan’s innovations in oil and gas production

When Fan joined Mines in 2018, the university did not have a production teaching lab where undergrad and graduate students could gain experience using tools they’d encounter in the real world, including multiphase flow demonstration, artificial lift and surface production facilities.

She brought to Mines extensive experience conducting large-scale multiphase flow experiments during her graduate and postdoctoral research, making her well-positioned to build a lab with state-of-the-art training tools that bring production engineering concepts to life. With initial support from Chevron, Fan designed every piece of equipment herself. She then brought in a former teacher who has extensive experience in equipment design and fabrication to build each system specifically for student learning.

“A hands-on teaching laboratory is essential for helping students connect classroom theory with real production systems,” Fan said. “It allows them to visualize multiphase flow behavior, understand how production equipment works and gain practical experience with key technologies used to produce and transport fluids from the reservoir to the surface.”

Fan leads two laboratories for her own production engineering investigations: one on campus with multiple large-scale multiphase flow loops and another at the Edgar Experimental Mine with even larger-scale flow facilities. Her research spans multiphase flow modeling and metering, pipeline and wellbore integrity assessment, artificial lift and multiphase flow-related assurance problems.

Her team is developing new technologies that improve monitoring and quantifying of multiphase flow under surface and subsurface conditions, while detecting and assessing integrity issues in flowlines and wellbores. For example, they’re exploring how to use distributed fiber-optic sensing instead of conventional point sensors to continuously monitor for issues in real time.

“Understanding how fluids move through production systems—and being able to monitor that flow and the integrity of the infrastructure in real time—is fundamental to making energy production safer, more efficient and more reliable,” she said.

Fan is also building a collaborative group that can support broader partnerships with industry and accelerate development and field application of next-generation production monitoring technologies.

“There is a tremendous opportunity to bring advanced sensing, modeling and data analytics together to change how we monitor production systems,” Fan said. “The Thorson Chair gives us an important opportunity to further strengthen this research area, expand our experimental capabilities and build a broader collaborative program with industry.”