Dr. David C. Sego is a world-renowned expert in permafrost and cold region engineering and oil sands tailings research and management. As a distinguished member of the Geotechnical Centre at the University of Alberta, his extensive high-quality research has bolstered Canada’s international reputation for innovation in technology and research related to natural resources development and the arctic. In the former context, he has provided enormous leadership as Principal Investigator at the Oil Sands Tailing Research Facility at the University of Alberta.

Dr. Sego played an integral role in establishing three state-of-the-art research facilities in Alberta, namely, the $2.2-million Oil Sands Tailings Research Facility (OSTRF), the Cold Regions Research Facility and the Geochemistry Laboratory at the University of Alberta. In these facilities, his team of researchers and students carries out world-class research to solve challenging issues related to oil sands tailings. He is well known for conducting innovative and practical research.

Several of Dr. Sego’s groundbreaking technological developments have transferred into standard industry use. For example, under his leadership, a cross-disciplinary collaborative team developed a novel hand-held Naphthenic Acids Fluorescence Sensor in 2009. This technology offers a cost-effective, bench scale, non-invasive and continuous water quality monitoring tool that detects, characterizes and tracks changes of naphthenic acids in process-affected waters.

For the past ten years, Dr. Sego has organized various oil sands tailings-related conferences, including the internationally acclaimed International Oil Sands Tailings Conferences biennially from 2008 through 2016. In recent years, this activity has contributed to Canada’s ability to demonstrate its leadership in oil sands tailings research and management.