Neal Nagel is currently Chief Engineer at Itasca Houston, a geomechanical consulting and software company. Nagel has more than 25 years of experience in petroleum geomechanics, with much of that time spent in the technology center and operating unit of a major operating oil company. Throughout his career, he has performed extensive reservoir, completions/stimulation, and drilling geomechanics evaluations—including cuttings reinjection (solids injection)—for worldwide operations. He has extensive geomechanics training experience, both for new engineers and for experienced personnel, in areas such as hydraulic fracturing and wellbore stability. Nagel is an active member of SPE and the American Rock Mechanics Association (ARMA) and has served as an SPE Distinguished Lecturer.

John McLennan has been an associate professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Utah since October 2009 and a research professor in the same department since 2008; he also has been a Senior Research Scientist at the Energy & Geoscience Institute since 2008. McLennan has 30 years of experience in geomechanics with petroleum service and technology companies. He worked for Dowell Schlumberger for 9 years in its Denver, Tulsa, and Houston facilities; later, with TerraTek in Salt Lake City, Advantek International in Houston, and ASRC Energy Services in Anchorage, he worked on projects concerned with coalbed methane recovery, rock mechanical properties determinations, produced water, and drill cuttings reinjection, as well as casing design issues related to compaction. His recent work has focused on optimized gas production from shales and unconsolidated formations, fluid-rock interactions, and geothermal energy recovery. McLennan holds a PhD degree in civil engineering from the University of Toronto.