9810291 Jose Roesset This award to the Engineering Research Center entitled "Offshore Technology Research Center (OTRC)" at Texas A&M University/University of Texas will develop an integrative multidisciplinary summer institute program in offshore engineering for regular graduate students working at the OTRC, graduate students at other universities who are completing or are about to complete their degree requirements and plan to work for offshore companies, and practicing engineers who may consider it as a continuing education program. The summer institute will be organized around an integrated design project involving an offshore facility, starting with economic and political considerations and then progressing to the actual planning and design. In parallel with this ongoing design experience where the students will work in collaborative teams, the students will also take a series of one-week modular courses covering related material: offshore economics, environmental policy and regulations, risk assessment and management, project planning and execution, teams and teamwork, technical communications, etc. These courses will be planned and scheduled so that their material can be integrated into the design process. The OTRC research on seafloor characterization and foundations and behavior of composite materials in the marine environment, as well as developed software on fluid-structure interaction, will be integrated into the summer institute. Models of student designs will be evaluated using OTRC's wave basin facility.
