People

Faculty

Marcelo Paredes

Associate Professor

Principal Researcher

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

Students

Fatemeh Asadi

fatemeasaditb@tamu.edu

PERIOD: FALL 2022 – PRESENT

Fatemeh holds a background in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering with a specialization in fluid–structure interactions of composites. During her Master’s studies, she investigated the behavior of composite materials under varying fluid conditions. Currently, her doctoral research focuses on corrosion control of offshore infrastructures, where she applies her expertise to protect critical assets from degradation in harsh marine environments.

Abdullah Othman

abdullah.atef@tamu.edu

PERIOD: SPRING 2023-PRESENT

Abdullah is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Ocean Engineering at Texas A&M University. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Offshore and Coastal Engineering from Alexandria University in 2019 and is in the process of completing a Master’s in Marine Engineering at the same institution. Before starting his doctoral studies, Abdullah worked as an offshore structural engineer at Advanced Energy Systems (ADES), an offshore drilling contractor in Egypt. In this role, he was responsible for structural modifications, preparing detailed drawings, supervising offshore construction activities on jack-up rigs, and ensuring compliance with approved designs throughout 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.

Shaun Boese

shaun_boese@tamu.edu

PERIOD: FALL 2025 – PRESENT

Shaun Boese is currently pursuing a Masters in Ocean Engineering at Texas A&M. Shaun earned his Bachelors in Ocean Engineering at Texas A&M at Galveston in 2025, and decided to continue pursuing his education after working under Dr. Marcelo Paredes. With a high interest in both coastal engineering and material science, Shaun wishes to further expand his knowledge on these subjects to try and further solve many of industries problems combating corrosion on coastal structures

Alumni

Yuhao Li

Period: FALL 2019 – SUMMER 2025

Yuhao earned his Ph.D. in Ocean Engineering from Texas A&M University in the summer of 2025. 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 research at OESEM focused on both experiments and simulations of material behavior under harsh conditions, including temperature-dependent damage, hydrogen-induced damage, and plasticity and fracture modeling. Furthermore, he conducted advanced material characterization through scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive spectroscopy, x-ray diffraction, and other techniques to investigate hydrogen susceptibility in multi-principal element alloys. He is now working as a senior engineer at ABS in Houston, USA.

Cuneyt Sakonder

Period: FALL 2019 – FALL 2023

Muhammet Cuneyt Sakonder earned his Ph.D. in Ocean Engineering from Texas A&M University in the fall of 2023. Prior to his doctoral studies, Cuneyt worked as a project engineer at Skipsteknisk A/S for three years. He earned both his master’s degree in Offshore Engineering and his bachelor’s degree in Shipbuilding and Ocean Engineering from Istanbul Technical University. His doctoral research focused on the occurrence of reverse fracture in high-strength pipeline steels under impact loads. Cuneyt was awarded a Fulbright Ph.D. Scholarship by the Turkish Fulbright Commission and the American Bureau of Shipping Scholarship. He also received the Best Student Poster Award at the SNAME Offshore Symposium in 2023. He is now working as a senior engineer at Genesis in Houston, USA.

Lufeng Xue

Period: Fall 2018 – Fall 2022

Lufeng Xue completed his doctoral studies and earned his Ph.D. in Ocean Engineering from Texas A&M University in the fall of 2022. He then completed his postdoctoral training in Prof. Haihui Ruan’s research group at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where he worked on glassy materials research. He is currently a research scientist at the Yangtze Delta Region Academy of the Beijing Institute of Technology in Jiaxing, China. His research focuses on high-entropy alloys, including their design, microstructure characterization, and mechanical and electrochemical assessment. The objective of his work is to develop next-generation alloys with the potential for use 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.