Maria A. Nikolinakou is currently a Research Associate at the Bureau of Economic Geology, Jackson School of Geosciences, at the University of Texas at Austin. She works for the AGL, and GeoFluids consortia.
Maria is a Civil/Geotechnical Engineer, she received her Science Doctorate on Theoretical Soil Mechanics from MIT in 2008. She holds a M.Sc. in Geotechnical Engineering from MIT and a Civil Engineering degree from NTUA, Greece.

Before joining the Jackson School, she worked for Shell Exploration and Production on Reservoir Geomechanics.
Her current research topics include:
- Modeling of stresses and pore pressures in sediments bounding salt bodies
- Prediction of stresses and pore pressures at the crest of dipping structures
- Borehole stability
- Poromechanical modeling of basin sediments, including transient pore pressure dissipation
- Geomechanical pore-pressure prediction
- Numerical modeling in salt tectonics.

Areas of Expertise:
-Geotechnical Engineering
- Constitutive modeling
- Coupled stress-pore pressure prediction
- Dipping structures
- Borehole stability
- Poromechanical modeling of basin sediments
- Transient pore pressure dissipation
- Salt Tectonics
- Numerical modeling: Abaqus, ELFEN

We predict pressure and stress near salt using two approaches: evolutionary modeling and static modeling coupled with velocity measurements.

Evolutionary geomechanical models allow us to couple sedimentation with salt deformation, and study how stress and strength of basin sediments evolve as salt diapirs grow and develop into salt sheets. We examine a case of salt-sheet emplacement with roof, and show that sediments develop high differential stresses as they fold in front of a rolling salt sheet. In many areas, shear stress reaches the shear strength and sediments are failing. We illustrate that the geometry of salt base can provide a first order estimation of shear and least-principal-stress orientation subsalt, hence identify hazardous drilling areas.

We also discuss pressure prediction using static models of present-day salt geometries coupled with seismic velocities. Pore pressure is predicted using mean and shear stress derived from the geomechanical model. We demonstrate this new workflow using data from the Mad Dog field, in the Gulf of Mexico. We show that the workflow incorporates non-uniaxial loading, as well as the response of the geologic environment, and accounts for shear-induced pore pressures. Overall, it provides the full stress tensor and an enhanced pressure prediction ahead of the drill bit.