Dr. M. Sam Mannan is Regents Professor in the Chemical Engineering Department at Texas A&M University and Director of the Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center at the Texas Engineering Experiment Station.  The mission of the Center is to improve safety in the chemical process industry by conducting programs and research activities that promote safety as second nature for all plant personnel in their day-to-day activities.  Before joining Texas A&M University, Dr. Mannan was Vice President at RMT, Inc., a nationwide engineering services company.

Dr. Mannan is a registered professional engineer in the states of Texas and Louisiana and is a Certified Safety Professional.  His experience is wide ranging, covering process design of chemical plants and refineries, computer simulation of engineering problems, mathematical modeling, process safety, risk assessment, inherently safer design, critical infrastructure vulnerability assessment, aerosol modeling, and reactive and energetic materials assessments.

Dr. Mannan is involved very closely with projects that include hazard assessment and risk analysis, process hazard identification, HAZOP (hazard and operability) studies, vulnerability assessment, process safety management, and risk management.  His research interests include development of inherently safer processes, application of computational fluid dynamics to study the explosive characteristics of flammable gases, development of quantitative methods to determine incompatibility among various chemicals, application of calorimetric methods for the assessment of reactive hazards, and the application of consequence analyses to assess the impact of process plant incidents.

Dr. Mannan has published 197 peer-reviewed journal publications, 4 books, 7 book chapters, 190 proceedings papers, 14 major reports, and 202 technical meeting presentations.  He co-authored the Guidelines for Safe Process Operations and Maintenance published by the Center for Chemical Process Safety, American Institute of Chemical Engineers.  And has been the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions including the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Service to Society Award, the Texas A&M University Association of Former Students’ Distinguished Achievement Award for Teaching, the Texas Engineering Experiment Station Research Fellow, to name a few.

Dr. Mannan received his B.S. in chemical engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1978, and obtained his M.S. in 1983 and Ph.D. in 1986 in chemical engineering from the University of Oklahoma.