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 for eight years. He oversaw ten 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 API, OGP, UKOOA and the Center for LNG.

Dr. Mentzer currently serves as the Executive Director of the Purdue Process Safety & Assurance Center. His research interests are in the area of process safety - how to prevent major industrial incidents such as Bhopal, Deepwater Horizon, risk and hazard analyses applicable to a variety of industries. His interests include engineering education.

"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., Journal of 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., Journal 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., Journal 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.

"Inherently Safer Sustained Casing Pressure Testing for Well Integrity Evaluation", Rocha-Valadez, T., Mentzer, R.A., Hasan, A.R. and Mannan, M.S., Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, 29, 209-215, 2014.

"What Does Safe Look & Feel Like?", Mentzer, R.A., Mannan, M.S., Zhang, J; Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, 32, 265-275, 2014.

"Modeling Operators' Emergency Response Time for Chemical Processing Operations", Murray, S., Harputl, M.S., Mentzer, R.A., Mannan, M.S.; Journal of Emergency Management, vol 12, Sept / Oct, 479-486, 2014.

"Numerical study on physical mechanisms of forced dispersion for an effective LNG spill mitigation", Kim, B. K., Mentzer, R. A., & Mannan, M. S., Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research 53, 9488 - 9498, 2014.

"Inherently Safer Sustained Casing Pressure Testing for Well Integrity Evaluation", Rocha-Valadez, T.; Mentzer, R. A.; Hasan, A. R.; Mannan, M. S., Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, 29, 209-215, 2014.

"Evaluation of Offshore Operations and Drilling Risk Factors: Part I", Anne Mims, Tony Rocha-Valadez, Ray A. Mentzer, M. Sam Mannan; Oil & Gas Journal, May 5, 2014.

"Evaluation of Offshore Operations and Drilling Risk Factors: Part II", Tony Rocha-Valadez, Anne Mims, Ray A. Mentzer, M. Sam Mannan; Oil & Gas Journal, June 2, 2014.