Faculty Profiles

Dr. Sevan Goenezen received his BS/MS degree (called Diplom in Germany) in Aeronautical Engineering from the “Rheinisch-Westfaelische Technische Hochschule Aachen (RWTH)” in Germany in December 2006. He completed his PhD program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in May 2011, where he developed and implemented efficient algorithms to solve inverse problems in finite elasticity using finite element analysis. Its application to nonlinear elasticity imaging of breast tumors has shown great potential to diagnose breast cancer non-invasively. He became a finalist for the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT-RPI Prize with his findings on breast cancer diagnosis using nonlinear elasticity imaging. After his PhD program, Dr. Goenezen was a postdoctoral researcher in the Biomedical Engineering Department at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) from 2011 to 2013. At OHSU his research focused on congenital heart defects of the embryonic chicken heart and risk of rupture of abdominal aortic aneurysms using fluid-structure-interaction computations. Afterwards, he became a faculty in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University in 2013 and lead an active research program, advising PhD, MS and BS students until May of 2020. His research was supported by the ASME Research Initiation Grant for young faculty sponsored by the Haythornthwaite Foundation the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health. He developed and tested a novel technology that views the interior of a heterogeneous solids using digital camera images and the mechanical behavior of solids. He termed this invention “Mechanics Based Tomography”. During his time at Texas A&M University, Dr. Gonezen advised 1 PhD student who is currently an Associate Professor at the prestigious Dalian University in China. He also advised 5 students in their MS thesis. From 2020 to 2023, Dr. Gonezen pursued a startup company to further develop “Mechanics Based Tomography.” Dr. Gonezen recently joined the Ingram School of Engineering at Texas State University to support their new Mechanical Engineering Program as a Lecturer and is excited to be part of this growing program.