People

Faculty

Marcelo Paredes

Assistant Professor

Principal Researcher

Marcelo earned his doctoral degree from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil by 2012 in the area of structural integrity and fracture mechanics after serving in the Ecuadorian Navy as an officer for 15 years. Before joining the department of Ocean Engineering at Texas A&M University in Galveston (TAMUG), Marcelo spent five years as a researcher in the Impact and Crashworthiness Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, where he got involved with industry-driven research projects, specifically, focused on damage and material modeling of Oil & Gas (O&G) infrastructure that includes pipeline networks, risers, and subsea systems. Since he joined TAMUG his research interests have slightly been expanded toward emerging fields such as sensing corrosion technologies and combinatorial alloy design encompassing with state-of-the-art material characterization techniques such as EBSD, EDS, SEM, XRD, XPS, as well as electrochemical analysis techniques for probing new materials.

Students

Yuhao Li

lyh830@tamu.edu

Period: FALL 2019 – present

Yuhao is a Ph.D. student. He obtained his master’s degree in Ocean Engineering in 2019 at Texas A&M University, USA, and his bachelor’s degree in Ocean Engineering in 2017 at Tianjin University, China. Yuhao’s current research focuses on both experiments and simulations of material behavior under harsh conditions, including temperature-dependent damage and hydrogen-induced damage, and plasticity & fracture modeling. Further, advanced material characterization through scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive spectroscopy, x-ray diffraction, etc. to investigate hydrogen susceptibility in multi-principal element alloys.

Fatemeh Asadi

fatemeasaditb@tamu.edu

PERIOD: SPRING 2023 – PRESENT

Fatemeh’s background lies in the field of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, specializing in Fluid-Structure Interactions of composites. With a Master’s degree in the field, her research focused on exploring the behavior of composites under different fluid conditions. Currently, Fatemeh is engaged in the corrosion control of offshore infrastructures, where she applies her expertise to safeguard vital assets from degradation in the harsh marine environment.

Abdullah Othman

abdullah.atef@tamu.edu

PERIOD: FALL 2023-PRESENT

Abdullah is currently pursuing a Ph.D degree in the Ocean Engineering department at Texas A&M University. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Offshore and Coastal Engineering from Alexandria University in 2019, and he is currently in the process of completing a Master’s in Marine Engineering from the same institution. Previously, Abdullah worked in the industry at Advanced Energy Systems (ADES), an offshore drilling contractor in Egypt, where he served as an offshore structural engineer for a year. In this role, he was responsible for tasks such as providing structural modifications, creating detailed drawings, supervising offshore construction work for jack-up rigs, and ensuring compliance with approved drawings during the construction process.

Mahmodul Hasan Maheen

hasan.maheen@tamu.edu

PERIOD: FALL 2022-PRESENT

Mahmodul is a second-year doctoral student in the Department of Ocean Engineering at Texas A&M University. He earned his Bachelor of Science from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology and Master of Science degree from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, both in Mechanical Engineering. My research interests encompass ocean renewable energy harvesting and the mechanics and control of offshore structures. My current research focuses on a probabilistic analysis of metocean parameters for evaluating offshore wind energy potential and the structural design analysis of wind turbines.

Sabrina Jahan

shopno@tamu.edu

Period: SPRING 2025 – present

Sabrina Jahan is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Ocean Engineering at Texas A&M University. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Petroleum and Mining Engineering from the Military Institute of Science and Technology (MIST) in Bangladesh. After graduating in 2022, she worked as a petrochemical engineer for a year at Renata Ltd, overseeing their pyrolysis processes and conducting oil analysis in a laboratory setting. During her time in the industry, she became increasingly interested in the integrity and resilience of oil and gas pipelines. This led her to pursue advanced studies in Ocean Engineering, where she has started her research with a focus on the effects of seismic fault displacement on buried oil and gas pipelines to improve their safety and reliability.

Alumni

Cuneyt Sakonder

Period: FALL 2019 – FALL 2023

Muhammet Cuneyt Sakonder earned his Ph.D. degree in Ocean Engineering at Texas A&M University. Cuneyt was previously a project engineer at Skipsteknisk A/S for 3 years. Before that, he earned his Master’s degree in Offshore Engineering and his Bachelor’s degree in Shipbuilding and Ocean Engineering, both from Istanbul Technical University. Cuneyt’s research focus during his doctoral studies was on the occurrence of reverse fracture in high strength pipeline steels under impact loads. Cuneyt has been awarded Fulbright Ph.D. Scholarship by the Turkish Fulbright Commission and American Bureau of Shipping Scholarship. He also received the best student poster award in SNAME Offshore Symposium in 2023.

Now he is working in TechnipFMC – Houston, USA.

Lufeng Xue

Period: Fall 2018 – Fall 2022

Lufeng Xue completed his doctoral studies successfully and graduated in December 2022 at Galveston campus. Lufeng wrapped up his postdoc training at Prof. Haihui Ruan’s research group in the Hong Kong Polytechnic University on glassy materials research. Currently he works as a research scientist at Yangtze Delta Region Academy of Beijing Institute of Technology in Jiaxing, China. His research topic focuses on the high entropy alloy, including design, microstructure characterization, mechanical & electrochemical assessment. Objective of his research is developing next generation alloys which have the potential to be used in harsh environments such as Hydrogen storage and transportation.

Visiting Scholars

Sergio L. Gonzales A.

lorica@coppe.ufrj.br

Period: October, 2023 – March, 2024

Sergio Luis Gonzalez Assias is currently completing a Ph.D. degree in metallurgical and materials engineering at COPPE/Universidad Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). He earned his master’s degree in metallurgical and Material Engineering in 2021 at COPPE/UFRJ, and his bachelor’s degree in metallurgical engineering in 2018 at Universidad Industrial de Santander (UIS). He spent a semester as an international exchange student at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in 2017. Sergio’s research focuses on the characterization of the mechanical behavior of metals, including experimental characterization of fracture toughness, fatigue, and structural integrity. His research aims to develop criteria to assess the fracture toughness of ferritic steels with splits at the upper shelf of the ductile-brittle transition. Currently, he is also involved in research projects in partnership with Oil & Gas companies focused on the fabrication of load-bearing components by Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing.

Claudio Ruggieri

claudio.ruggieri@usp.br

Period: July, 2022 – Aug, 2023

Claudio Ruggieri is a Professor of Structural Engineering and Fracture Mechanics at the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil and principal investigator of the Fracture Mechanics and Structural Integrity Research Group (NAMEF) at USP. He received his Ph.D. from Osaka University in 1994 and was a research assistant and visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) from 1994-1997. He was a visiting researcher at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) from 2014 to 2015 and at the University of Manchester (UK) supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2018. He is currently a visiting researcher at the Dept. of Ocean Engineering, at Texas A&M University. Prof. Ruggieri has published extensively in the areas of fracture mechanics and structural integrity contributing more than 75 papers in strongly refereed journals and more than 180 articles in national and international conferences. He has also received some research awards, most notably from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and is currently a Research Fellow with the Brazilian Research Council (CNPq 1A). Prof. Ruggieri is a member of various committees and editorial boards, including Committee E08 (Fracture and Fatigue) of the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), Editorial Advisory Board for Engineering Fracture Mechanics, the European Structural Integrity Society (ESIS) and the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences (ABCM).

Diego F.B. Sarzosa

dsarzosa@usp.br

Period: July, 2021 – Aug, 2022

Diego Sarzosa Burgos got a position as a professor at the Naval and Ocean Engineering Department, University of São Paulo, Brazil, in 2015. Prof Diego Sarzosa has published extensively in the areas of fracture mechanics, fatigue, and structural integrity of pipelines contributing with more than 50 publications between papers in strongly refereed journals and articles in national and international conferences. Prof. Diego Sarzosa’s research focuses on numerical modeling and experimental characterization of fracture and fatigue failure models for metallic and nonmetallic materials. His efforts in these fields are translated directly into more reliable and fail-safe operations of high-performance structures such as welded steel structures, pressure vessels, pipelines, and offshore structures.