Zenon Medina-Cetina, PhD

Dr. Medina-Cetina is Associate Professor at Texas A&M University, in the Zachry Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, and holds a join appointment in Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering, the Department of Ocean Engineering, and the Department of Geography. He leads the Stochastic Geomechanics Laboratory SGL (2008 - Present), comprised by eleven students (10 PhDs, 1 MSc and 3 Undergraduate), conducting research in probabilistic applications in engineering, to improve current practices on risk assessment and management, related to natural and anthropogenic threats, having social, economic and environmental impacts.

At TAMU he leads the largest and most active international faculty driven project called the "Yucatan Initiative" (2014-Present), a collaboration between Texas A&M and Yucatan’s System of Research, and Technological Development (SIIDETEY) in Mexico, developing research, academic, and service projects to generate well-being and sustainable regional economic development for both countries and regions (http://yucatan-initiative.tamu.edu).

Dr. Medina-Cetina is a Civil Engineer from the Universidad Autonoma de Yucatan UADY Mexico (Highest Honors, Soil Dynamics, 1994), and a Master of Engineering from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico UNAM (Geostatistics, 1996). While at the UNAM, he obtained a faculty adjunct position in the College of Engineering to teach Probability and Statistics, and worked as a research assistant for the Instituto de Ingenieria I de I (1996 - 2001). During this same period of time, he worked as independent consultant, where he got involved in some of the most challenging geotechnical projects of the time, both in Mexico and Internationally (1998-2001), by introducing geostatistical analysis on large scale site characterization projects, to account for the influence of material heterogeneity in soil-structure interaction problems, both onshore and offshore.

In 2001 Dr. Medina-Cetina was awarded the Fulbright Scholarship to pursue graduate studies in the U.S., where he obtained a Masters of Science and a Philosophy Doctorate at The Johns Hopkins University (Stochastic Mechanics, 2001- 2006). After completing his graduate studies in the U.S, he held a dual appointment at the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute NGI in Oslo Norway (2006 - 2008), at the International Centre for Geohazards ICG and at the Computational Geomechanics Division CGD. His research and consulting interests in Offshore Site Investigation and Geotechnics include Risk Mapping for Geospatial Systems; Risk, Reliability and Sensibility Analysis; Probabilistic Site Characterization for Integrated Studies (Geology, Geophysics and Geotechnical); and Uncertainty Quantification of Multi-Physics Geomechanical Processes.

Dr. Medina-Cetina has complemented his professional and academic career by serving twice as Chair of the Offshore Site Investigation and Geotechnics Committee (OSIG) of the Society for Underwater Technology SUT (2012-2015). In 2013 he was named ¨SUT Fellow¨, and in November 2015 he was elected President & Chair of the SUT branch in the U.S. He is Associate Director of the Center for Geospatial Sciences, Applications and Technology (GEOSAT) (2017-Present), and Secretary of the Technical Committee Machine Learning and Big Data (TC309) of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) (2018-Present). He was appointed Zachry Career Development Professorship II in the Zachry Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering (2019-2021), in recognition of his accomplishments and future potential within the department.