A quote I heard several years ago stuck with me: “Farewells are a muscular task, and I've taught them well.”

Leaving the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign was one of the hardest farewells of my life. I had a full-ride scholarship. I was working with brilliant minds like Prof. Jian Peng and Justin Sirignano. The path to a PhD was clear, safe, and prestigious.

But I had an itch that theory couldn't scratch. I wanted to see my algorithms live in the wild. I had a bias for action.

So, I packed my bags—both literally and figuratively—and went to make my mark on the energy industry. I traded the certainty of academia for the heat and messiness of the oilfield. Seven years, eight papers, and six AI patents later, there isn’t a doubt in my mind that I made the right choice.

Today, in my role as AI Platform Manager at SLB, I spend less time writing papers (although I still do quite a bit of that) and more time writing the operating system for a balanced plant.

What continues to excite me is the scale of the challenge itself.

We’re being asked to solve two problems at once: delivering reliable energy to the world while reducing the environmental impact of producing it. Many people see those objectives as contradictory. I see them as an engineering problem waiting to be solved.

Over the coming years, my ultimate hope and expectation is to help the industry achieve what I call "autonomous sustainability."

I want to see a future where AI agents, like the ones our team is building with Lumi™️and Tela™️, actively manage the planet's energy resources.

I envision an industry where methane leaks are detected and repaired by autonomous drones before a human even knows they exist, and where "net zero" isn’t just a slogan but a programmed reality. I want us to prove that technology can heal the planet as effectively as it powers it.

It’s an ambitious goal, I know. But I’m confident that we can get there if we go all in. Our industry must collectively challenge the status quo, embrace new ways of working, and be open to taking calculated risks.

Sometimes the path to success requires walking away from certainty. I’m living proof of that.

So, to all the dreamers and dropouts: Your classroom is the world. Now go build something.