Offshore Energy Safety Track: Early-Career Research Fellowship

Cycle

2025 - Offshore Energy Safety Track
2024 - Offshore Energy Safety Track
2023 - Offshore Energy Safety Track
2022 - Offshore Energy Safety Track
2021 - Offshore Energy Safety Track

Paul Miller

Dr. Paul Miller is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences at Louisiana State University. He is a coastal meteorologist whose research examines thunderstorms and their associated hazardous weather impacts, focused mostly in the Southeast U.S. and Caribbean. Dr. Miller received a B.S. in Meteorology and M.S. in Geography from Virginia Tech, and he subsequently completed a Ph.D. and postdoctoral research appointment at the University of Georgia before joining LSU in January 2019. Upon arrival, he founded and now supervises the LSU Coastal Meteorology (COMET) Lab with an emphasis on improving weather forecasts. The COMET Lab’s recent projects include creating a high-resolution climatological-based forecast of pop-up thunderstorms along the Gulf Coast, an ongoing analysis of the severe weather conditions associated with the April 2021 wreck of the SEACOR Power, and leading the development of a new Gulf of Mexico-centric seasonal hurricane forecast. The latter attracted nationwide media interest shortly after the impact of Hurricane Ida in August 2021. In addition to the COMET Lab’s research activities, Dr. Miller recently served as the weather scientist and forecaster for “Delta-X”, a large NASA-led field campaign along the Louisiana coast in Spring and Fall 2021. Meanwhile, Dr. Miller's classroom instruction, in which he trains students to perform weather modeling experiments based on the Disney movie Frozen, was also the subject of news articles by the Associated Press, Forbes, U.S. News and World Report, and a number of other outlets in November 2019.

Ranjana Mehta

Dr. Ranjana Mehta is an associate professor in the Wm Michael Barnes ’64 Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and a Presidential Impact Fellow at Texas A&M University. She is a leading expert in human-systems engineering, specializing in neuroergonomics, where she pioneered novel brain-behavior imaging methodologies to understand and assess multifaceted causes and consequences of operator fatigue in the wild. She adopts this paradigm to drive empirical and translational scientific efforts towards understanding, monitoring, and mitigating human-technology interaction elements of systemic risks in safety-critical environments (e.g., emergency response, offshore energy). Her scholarly contributions include 127 peer-reviewed publications, 8 book chapters, international keynote/plenaries, and invitations to serve on governmental and industry committees (e.g, Center for Offshore Safety Fatigue Risk Management Work Group). Her research on understanding and mitigating fatigue and stress-related variability in worker health and safety has been funded by the NIH, NSF, NIOSH, and the NASEM Gulf Research Program. Dr. Mehta received the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) 2019 Woman of the Year Award, 2019 Creativeness in Ergonomics Practitioner of the Year Award by the Institute of Industrial & Systems Engineers (IISE), and the 2017 HFES William C. Howell Young Investigator Award, and her students have received best paper/poster awards at HFES and IISE conferences. She serves as an associate editor of several human factors and ergonomics journals and is an elected Executive Council Member of HFES and Chair of the HFES WOMAN group. Dr. Mehta earned her Ph.D. and MS in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech.

Shahrzad Roshankhah

Dr. Shahrzad Roshankhah is an Assistant Professor at the University of Utah’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her research involves laboratory and numerical simulations to model the coupled thermal, hydraulic, chemical, and mechanical behavior of geomaterials and similar synthetic materials. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award on the multi-scale behavior of jointed rock slopes and the US Department of Energy on geological CO2 storage and engineered proppants for enhanced geothermal systems. Before joining the University of Utah, Shahrzad taught civil engineering at California State University, Long Beach. Before that, she was a research scientist at the California Institute of Technology, where she studied the behavior of hydraulic fractures in naturally fractured rocks and the elastoplastic behavior of particle-wall impacts. She has published over 25 peer-reviewed journal papers and conference articles and serves as the vice chair of the Rock Mechanics Technical Committee of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and a member of five other technical committees under ASCE and the American Rock Mechanics Association (ARMA). She also reviews for several high-caliber journals in the geomechanics field. Her professional service and leadership have been recognized by two awards from ARMA as a Future Leader and Offshore Technology Conference as an Emerging Leader. She has over six years of industry experience and is a holder of a Professional Engineering License from the State of Utah. Dr. Roshankhah received her Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology and her M.S. degree from the Amirkabir University of Technology, both in geomechanics.

Shiqiang (Nick) Zou

Dr. Shiqiang (Nick) Zou is an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Michigan State University, where he leads the Electrochemical Wastewater Management (EWAM) Lab. His research integrates applied electrochemistry, selective separation, and process engineering to develop energy-efficient, scalable water treatment systems that recover valuable resources from industrial, agricultural, and municipal waste streams. His research group investigates rate-limiting mechanisms through thermodynamic and kinetic analysis and addresses system-scale engineering challenges to enable field deployment of electrified separation and transformation technologies. His interdisciplinary team includes scholars from diverse academic and cultural backgrounds, fostering inclusive collaboration and innovation. Dr. Zou’s work has been supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Department of Defense’s Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP), and Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT). He previously served as an assistant professor at Auburn University and completed his postdoctoral training at Stanford University. Dr. Zou is currently an associate editor for Desalination and Water Treatment and has received honors including the ASCE ExCEEd Teaching Fellowship and the William F. Walker Teaching Award. He holds a B.Eng. in Environmental Engineering from Beijing Institute of Technology, an M.S. in Environmental Engineering from Peking University, an M.S. in Chemistry from the National University of Singapore, and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Smith Leggett

Dr. Smith Leggett is an Assistant Professor in the Bob L. Herd Department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas Tech University. His research interests include distributed fiber optic sensing for flow and geomechanics monitoring, multiphase fluid flow, and artificial lift. Dr. Leggett leads the Texas Tech Gas Lift Consortium, a joint industry project founded to develop technologies for late-life gas lifted wells. His research on liquid slug production enables preemptive actions to reduce risks related to offshore energy extraction. He serves as the Executive Director for the Southwestern Petroleum Short Course and is actively involved in the Society of Petroleum Engineers. He obtained his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and his Ph.D. in Petroleum Engineering from Texas A&M University. Prior to and during his graduate studies, Dr. Leggett accumulated seven years of industry experience, most of which was at Occidental Petroleum as a production and operations engineer. In addition, Dr. Leggett researched gas hydrates at the National Energy Technology Laboratory. His work has been recognized in journals such as the Society of Petroleum Engineers Journal, Fuel, and the Society of Exploration Geophysicists Interpretation journal.

Sriramya Nair

Dr. Sriramya Nair is an Assistant Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University. She is also a Faculty Fellow at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability and a Field Member in the Materials Science and Engineering Department. Dr. Nair’s research focuses on the development and characterization of sustainable cementitious materials and novel cementing techniques. She has developed a novel concrete with real-time control based on the principles of magneto-rheology. This patented work has led to the development of a wireline electromagnet for improving the displacement efficiency of well-cementing operations and preventing the formation of channels during hydration of cement slurries. As a Research Associate in Petroleum Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, her work focused on alkali-activated materials, a superior alternative to traditional oil wells cements, which exhibit improved compatibility with synthetic-based drilling fluids. In addition, she worked on the use of fiber optic sensors for the detection of unwanted migration of oil and gases through cemented annuli. She also worked as a Post-Doctoral Associate at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS), investigating the micro-mechanical response of alternate cementitious materials and co-developed a high-pressure cell for testing materials under downhole conditions. She is a member of the American Concrete Institute, American Ceramics Society, and American Society of Civil Engineers. Dr. Nair received her B.Tech. in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, M.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of California, Davis, and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering Materials from The University of Texas at Austin.

Weina Meng

Stevens Institute of Technology

Dr. Weina Meng is an Assistant Professor in Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology and the Founding Director of the Advanced Concrete Technology lab, specializing in sustainable and resilient civil engineering materials. Her research focuses on four areas: advancements in Ultra-High-Performance Concrete, pioneering waste utilization and CO2 sequestration in low/negative carbon concrete, developing biomimetic concrete with high specific flexural strength and toughness, and utilizing AI for enhanced concrete design and characterization. Dr. Meng received recognition with the NSF CAREER award in 2021 and being named among the World’s Top 2% Scientists by Stanford University in 2023. She was also honored as "2020 Educator of the Year" by the ASCE New Jersey Section. Her academic contributions include 70 peer-reviewed journal articles, a US patent, two edited books, over 4,500 citations, and an H-index of 34. She holds memberships on ACI, ACS, and AcerS, editorial positions on two journals, and contributes to American Concrete Institute standards and technotes. Dr. Meng obtained her BS and MS in Civil Engineering from Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu, China and PhD from Missouri University of Science and Technology.

Xingpeng Li

Dr. Xingpeng Li is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Houston. His research interests include power system operations and planning, grid integration of renewable generation and energy storage, and microgrids. Dr. Li has published over 60 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers. Prior to joining UH, he was a Senior Application Engineer at ABB’s Power Grid division that is now Hitachi Energy. He also worked with the R&D divisions of ISO New England and PJM Interconnection. Dr. Li received Tier-1 Silver and Tier-2 Silver awards from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity for his two winning submissions to the Electricity Industry Technology and Practices Innovation Challenge prize competition in 2019. He was named an Emerging Leader by the Offshore Technology Conference in 2023 and selected by the Georgia Tech Energy Faculty Fellows program in 2023. Dr. Li received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Shandong University in Jinan, China, M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, Industrial Engineering from Arizona State University, and Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology, and his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Arizona State University.

Yaqing Jin

University of Texas at Dallas

Dr. Yaqing Jin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas. Dr. Jin leads a research group that tackles fluid mechanics problems through integrated laboratory experiments and theoretical models. His research focuses on fluid-structure-particle interaction issues, including wind energy, wave-structure interactions, flow control, flow sensing, and sediment particle transport, among others. His research outcomes have been published in recognized journals such as the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Physical Review Fluids, Physical Review E, and Applied Energy. Dr. Jin teaches courses in fluid mechanics and suspension flow physics, and his research is supported by various agencies, including the NSF, DoD, and companies affiliated with the NSFI/UCRC. He was awarded the Yee Fellowship in 2018 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Early Career Program award from the Army Research Office in 2024. Dr. Jin received his BS in Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and both his MS and PhD from the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2015 and 2019, respectively.

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Offshore Energy Safety Track: Early-Career Research Fellowship

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