Dr. Mentzer serves as the Executive Director of the Purdue Process Safety & Assurance Center. The ten-year old Center has +20 company sponsors, and two technical conferences and typically 25 process safety related research projects per year. He also teaches a rigorous chemical process safety course to ~170 seniors and graduate students, required of all undergraduates in Chemical Engineering. His research interests include prevention of major industrial incidents (such as Bhopal, Deepwater Horizon), and risk & hazard analyses applicable to a variety of industries.

Dr. Mentzer had more than a dozen assignments during a 28-year career with ExxonMobil in oil & gas operations, major project design, financial planning, public affairs, and safety / health / environment / security. He then joined the Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center within the Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University where he taught the senior-level Chemical Process Safety and Oil & Gas Processing courses. He oversaw over a dozen graduate students with research focusing on process safety management & metrics, risk assessment, safety culture & resilience, downhole drilling safety, and liquefied natural gas (LNG) safety and fire-related studies. Dr. Mentzer has been actively engaged on committees with a variety of industry associations, such as ACC, API, OGP, UKOOA and the Center for LNG.

Experimental vs. Predicted Heats of Reaction for Some Common Reaction Types in Pharmaceutical Industry’, K. L. Young, J. Humes, C. Justice & R. A. Mentzer, ACS OPR&D 2022.

‘Towards Safer Practices in Academic and Industrial Chemical Laboratories’, Sopuruchukwu Ezenwa, Abhijit D. Talpade, Pushkar Ghanekar, Jeremy Arvay, Ravi Joshi, Samuel Kravitz, Anirudh Tunga, Vikrant Gajria, Jayachandran Devaraj, Fabio H. Ribeiro, Ray Mentzer, ACS Journal of Safety & Health, January 2022.

‘Precompetitive Collaborations in the Pharmaceutical Industry: Process Safety Groups Work Together to Reduce Hazards, from R&D Laboratories to Manufacturing Facilities’, Ayman D. Allian, Roy C. Flanagan, Ray Mentzer, Jeffrey B. Sperry, Han Xia, and Ralph Zhao, ACS Journal of Safety & Health, 2021.

‘Factors Contributing to US Chemical Plant Process Safety Incidents from 2010–2020’, Yichen Wang, Tara Henriksen, Milind Deo, Ray A. Mentzer, J Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, 71 (2021), 104512.

‘Promoting a safe laboratory environment using the Reactive Hazard Evaluation & Analysis Compilation Tool (RHEACT)’, Abhijit D. Talpade, Pushkar Ghanekar, Sopuruchukwu Ezenwa, Ravi Joshi, Samuel Kravitz, Anirudh Tunga, Jayachandran Devaraj, Fabio H. Ribeiro, Ray Mentzer, ACS Journal of Safety & Health, 2021, 28, p 134-143.

‘Global Process Safety Incidents in the Pharmaceutical Industry’, Maaz S. Maniar, Apoorv Kumar, Ray A. Mentzer, J of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, 68, December 2020.

‘Process Safety Incidents Across Fourteen Industries’, Anvaya Bhusari, Amous Goh, Huan Ai, Sai Sathanapally, Mehfouz Jalal, and Ray A. Mentzer, Process Safety Progress, April 2020.

‘Review of failure Trends in the US Natural Gas Pipeline Industry: An in-depth Analysis of Transmission and Distribution System Incidents’, C. P. Vetter, L. A. Kuebel, D. Natarajan, R. A. Mentzer, J of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 60, 2019.

‘Resilience metrics for improved process-risk decision making: survey, analysis and application’, Perna Jain, Ray Mentzer & M. Sam Mannan; Safety Science, 108, p 13-28, 2018.

‘Review of global process safety regulations: United States, European Union, United Kingdom, China, India’, Jennifer Besserman, Ray A. Mentzer, J of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, 50, p 165-183, 2017.

‘A Framework for Developing Leading Indicators for Offshore Drillwell Blowout Incidents’, Nafiz Tamim; Delphine M Laboureur; Ray A Mentzer; A. Rashid Hasan; M.S. Mannan; Process Safety and Environmental Protection, January 2017.

‘Experimental and Numerical Study of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Pool Spreading and Vaporization on Water’, Gopalaswami, N; Kakosimos, K; Zhang, B; Liu, Y; Mentzer, R; and Mannan, S., J. Hazardous Materials, 334, 244-255, 2017.

‘Regulatory Approaches - Safety Case vs US Approach: Is there a best solution today?’, Jain, P.; Reese, A.M.; Chaudhari Dushyant; Mentzer, R.A.; Mannan, S., J of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, 46, 154-162, 2017.

‘Investigation of Pool Spreading and Vaporization Behavior in Medium-Scale LNG Tests’, Gopalaswami, N., Mentzer, R. A., and Mannan, S. M., J of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, 35, 267-276, 2015.

‘Quantification of Turbulence in Cryogenic Liquid Using High-Speed Flow Visualization’, Gopalaswami, N.; Laboureur, D.M.; Mentzer, R.A., Mannan, M.S.; Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, July 2015.

‘Communicating Costs and Benefits of the Chemical Industry and Chemical Technology to Society’, Pittman, W., Mentzer, R., Mannan M.S., Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries. Vol 35, p 59-64, 2015.