Detlef Hohl

Detlef Hohl holds a Master's degree in chemistry from Technical University of Munich and a PhD in theoretical physics from Technical University of Aachen (Germany). Before joining Shell, he was senior scientist at the German National Laboratory Forschungszentrum Jülich.

Detlef spent his entire Shell career in R&D, both in the US and in Europe. First in geophysical seismic imaging, then in probabilistic seismic inversion, and then he became R&D team leader for “Quantitative Reservoir Management”. From 2010-2017 he was R&D General Manager Computation and Modeling where he led a project portfolio in data analytics, computational engineering and materials science, geoscience and petroleum engineering.

Detlef was appointed Shell’s Chief Scientist for Computational and Data Science in 2017 where he oversees and guides Shell’s entire computational and computer science portfolio, including elements of Artificial Intelligence, physical systems simulation at all spatial and temporal scales, chemicals and chemical engineering modeling, future energy systems optimization, atmospheric and Earth science modeling.

Detlef has always used the largest available high-performance computers of their time to do big things that cannot be done otherwise. He is active in the academic, National laboratory and joint industry research communities, member of APS, ACM, SIAM, SPE, SEG and AGU. Detlef is adjunct professor and teaches courses at Rice University (Computational and Applied Math). He held various temporary and visiting positions at NCSA, SISSA Trieste, NIST and Stanford University. In his free time, science remains his biggest hobby.