Faculty Profile for Dr. Sevan Gonezen

profile photo for Dr. Sevan Gonezen
Dr. Sevan Gonezen
Lecturer — Ingram School of Engineering
IGRM 3306C
phone: (512) 245-1826

Biography Section

Biography and Education

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.

Teaching Interests

My teaching interests are in the general area of Solid Mechanics, but I do enjoy teaching students outside my area as well. Below are the courses that I taught so far in the past:
• Statics and Particle Dynamics
• Mechanics of Materials (Strength of Materials)
• Solid Mechanics in Mechanical Design
• Dynamics and Vibrations
• Engineering Analysis for Mechanical Engineers (numerical mathematics course using Python)
• Introduction to Statistics
• Statics
• Engineering Graphics

Graduate courses:
• Theory of Elasticity
• Modeling and Analysis of Mechanical Systems (mathematics course with applications in engineering for senior undergraduate and graduate students).

Research Interests

Computational mechanics and constitutive modeling of solids, biomechanics, soft and hard tissue modeling, fluid structure interaction, cardiovascular mechanics, development of diagnostic tools to detect diseased tissues, nonlinear finite element analysis, inverse problems with application to biomedical imaging, multiscale modeling, mathematical homogenization, residual stresses arising in manufacturing such as additive manufacturing, grain structural analysis, structural health monitoring of engineering materials, non-destructive testing for crack detection.

Selected Scholarly/Creative Work

  • Gonezen, S., Kotecha, M. C., & Reddy, J. N. (2022). Identification of the 3D crystallographic orientation using 2D deformations. The Journal of Strain Analysis for Engineering Design, 57(6), 445--458.
  • Gonezen, S., Kim, B. J., Kotecha, M., Luo, P., & Hematiyan, M. R. (2021). Mechanics based tomography (MBT): validation using experimental data. Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, 146, 104187.
  • Mei, Y., Stover, B., Kazerooni, N. A., Srinivasa, A., Hajhashemkhani, M., Hematiyan, M., & Gonezen, S. (2018). A comparative study of two constitutive models within an inverse approach to determine the spatial stiffness distribution in soft materials. International Journal of Mechanical Sciences, 140, 446--454.
  • Sridhar, S. L., Mei, Y., & Gonezen, S. (2018). Improving the sensitivity to map nonlinear parameters for hyperelastic problems. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 331, 474--491.
  • Mei, Y., Wang, S., Shen, X., Rabke, S., & Gonezen, S. (2017). Mechanics Based Tomography: A Preliminary Feasibility Study. Sensors, Special Issue: Force and Pressure Based Sensing Medical Application, 17(5), 1075.

Selected Awards

  • Award / Honor Recipient: Haythornthwaite Research Initiation Grant Award, ASME Applied Mechanics Division. 2014
  • Award / Honor Nominee: Lemelson-MIT-Rensselaer Student Prize Finalist, Lemelson Foundation. 2011

Selected Grants

  • Gonezen, Sevan. Multiscale Analysis of Residual Stresses with Novel Non-Destructive Approaches using In-complete Surface Displacement Measurements, National Science Foundation, Federal, $318928. (Funded: 2017 - 2020). Grant.