Roman Y. Makhnenko is an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Roman received his MS (2009) and PhD (2013) degrees in geological and civil engineering from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. From 2013 to 2016, Dr. Makhnenko worked as a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland) on the project related to assessment of geological storage of CO2.
Currently, Roman is leading the rock mechanics program at Illinois that includes modern high-pressure high-temperature rock testing facilities and new graduate and undergraduate courses on the topic.
Research interests:
- Rock-fluid interaction: poroviscoelasticity, plasticity, permeability, wettability, porosity waves
- Fracturing of rock: size effect, process zone, failure criteria, induced seismicity, hydraulic fracturing
- Geoenergy applications: CO2/H2 storage, nuclear waste disposal, shallow/deep geothermal energy
- Machine learning in geoengineering: lab and field data processing, Physics Informed NN
Research experiments:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), IL, USA
– Associate Professor, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering
08/2025-present
– Associate Professor, National Center for Supercomputing Applications
08/2025-present
– Associate Professor, Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment
08/2025-present
– Assistant Professor, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering
12/2016-08/2025
Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies (IMEDEA-CSIC-UIB), Mallorca, Spain
– Visiting Professor, Global Change Research Group
03/2026-06/2026
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland
– Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer
07/2013-11/2016
- Reservoir modeling and validation for geoenergies sponsored by SCCER-SoE
- Experimental assessment of geomechanics of deep CO2 sequestration sponsored by SFOE
- Geoengineering and CO2 storage sponsored by Petrosvibri SA
University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN, USA
– Research Assistant
08/2007-06/2013
- Geomechanical simulation of fluid-driven fractures sponsored by US Department of Energy
- Experim. and theor. investigation of fluid-driven fracture near free-surface sponsored by NSF
CSIRO Petroleum Resources, Clayton, Vic, Australia
– Research Assistant
06/2008-09/2008
- Conducted hydraulic fracturing tests with ultrasonic monitoring of fluid-driven fractures
Synergistic activities:
Committees:
- ISRM Working Group on Suggested Method for Achieving Full Water-Saturation of Rock
2022-2025
- ARMA Underground Storage and Utilization Technical Committee (CCUS topic lead)
2021-present
- ISRM Commission on Coupled Thermo-Hydro-Mech-Chemical Processes in Fractured Rock
2020-present
- ASCE GI Rock Mechanics Committee
2018-present
-
Swiss Competence Center for Energy Research Working Group “CO2 injection pilot site”
2015-2016
Editing:
- Editorial board member of International Journal of Rock Mechanics & Mining Sciences
since 2023
- Guest editor of Geofluids special issue “Geomechanics and Fluid Flow in Geothermal Systems”
2019
- Co-editor of ASCE Geo-Congress Technical Publications (7 volumes)
2020
Conference board member/session chair:
- Scientific committee member for GeoProc
2025
- Chair of session Coupled Processes in CO2 & H2 Storage: from lab to field scale at CouFrac
2024
- Advisory board member for 1st and 2nd Caprock Integrity and Gas Storage Symposium
2024, 2026
- Co-chair of session Energy Geotechnics: THMC Couple. Proc. in Soil and Rock at AGU
2023
- Co-chair of session Underground storage at 57th ARMA Symposium
2023
- Organizing committee member for 2nd and 3rd CouFrac
2020, 2022
- Co-chair of session Hydromechanical processes in energy geotechnics at AGU
2022
- Chair of session THMC coupling in geol. CO2 storage: from lab to field scale at CouFrac
2022
- Co-chair of session Induced seismicity: understand. trig. mech. & its forecasting at CouFrac
2022
- Co-chair of session Fluid and solute transfers in clay-rich fractured media at CouFrac
2022
- Co-chair of session Coupled THMC processes in geological media at EGU
2021-2026
- Co-chair of session Subsurface storage and sequestration at 56th ARMA Symposium
2022
- Chair of session Coupled processes in intact and fractured geologic media at AGU
2021
- Co-chair of session Coupled THMC processes in geological media at EGU
2021, 2022
- Co-chair of session Subsurface storage and sequestration at 55th ARMA Symposium
2021
- Advisory board member for 2nd International Conference on Energy Geotechnics
2020
- Organizing committee member for Int. Conf. on Coupled Proc. in Fractured Geol. Media
2020, 2022
- Co-chair of session Integrated Rock Physics in the Engineered Subsurface at AGU
2020
- Chair of session Non-linear poromechanics in geoenergy applications at AGU
2020
- Co-chair of GeoSystems session at Geo-Congress
2020
- Chair of session Multiphys. of geosystems: coupled THMC proc. in fract. porous media at AGU
2019
- Co-chair of Micromechanics of granular materials session at EMI
2018
- Chair of Characterization of materials and properties session at Biot VI conference
2017
- Co-chair of Rock Properties for Underground Excavation session at 51st ARMA Symposium
2017
- Co-chair of Subsurface Geology & Geo-Energy session at 14th Swiss Geoscience Meeting
2016
Journal and Conference Proceedings Reviewer:
International Journal of Rock Mechanics & Mining Sciences, Water Resources Research, Journal of Geophysical Research – Solid Earth, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, PNAS Nexus, Geophysical Research Letters, Scientific Reports, Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering, Journal of Energy Storage, Journal of Rock Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Communications Earth & Environment, Applied Energy, Journal of CO2 Utilization, Geophysics, Geothermics, Journal of Geological Society, Journal of Marine and Petroleum Geology, Journal of Engineering Mechanics, Mechanics Research Communications, Engineering Fracture Mechanics, Theoretical and Applied Fracture Mechanics, Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering, Geomechanics for Energy and the Environment, Géotechnique Letters, Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment, Geophysical Prospecting, Petroleum Geology, Geotechnical Testing Journal, AGU Books, ARMA symposium 2014-2026, GeoCongress 2019-2021 and 2025, IWBDG-2017 conference, Biot VI, VII conference, ASCE EMI 2018 and 2024, ICEGT 2020 and 2022, CouFrac 2020, 2022, 2024, 2026 CIGSS 2024 and 2026 .
Honors:
Haimson Keynote (Early Career Lecture), American Rock Mechanics Association
2026
Best oral presentation award at CouFrac 2024 (with Hyunbin Kim and Nikita Bondarenko)
2024
NSF Career Award
2023
National Center for Supercomputing Applications Fellowship
2022/23
Honorable mention at UIUC Undergraduate Research Symposium (with Matthew Krauss)
2023
Runner-up for best poster at ESAAPG 2022 (with Hyunbin Kim)
2022
Levenick Teaching Sustainability Fellowship
2021/22
List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by their students
Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Spring 2025
Best student paper at CouFrac 2022 (with Kiseok Kim)
2020
Travel grant, University of Minnesota
2013
Sommerfeld Fellowship, University of Minnesota
2007/08
Diploma with Honors, Moscow State University
2007