Mohammad Modarres is the Nicole Y. Kim Eminent Professor of Engineering and Director, Center for Risk and Reliability at the A.J. Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park. His research areas are probabilistic risk assessment, uncertainty analysis and probabilistic physics of failure and fracture mechanics. He is a consultant to governmental agencies, private organizations and national laboratories in areas related to probabilistic risk assessment. His interests in risk, reliability, structural integrity and prognosis and health management include both experimental and probabilistic model development efforts. He has over 500 papers in archival journals and proceedings of conferences that include multiple books and book chapters in various areas of risk and reliability engineering. He is a University of Maryland Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and a fellow of the American Nuclear Society. Dr. Modarres received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from Tehran Polytechnic, MS in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, and MS and PhD in Nuclear Engineering also from MIT.

Katrina Groth is an associate professor of Mechanical Engineering and the associate director for research for the Center for Risk and Reliability at the University of Maryland. Her work focuses on engineering safer systems through risk assessment and reliability engineering, with applications ranging from hydrogen fueling stations to nuclear power plants to pipelines. Dr. Groth holds a B.S. in Engineering and M.S. and Ph.D. in Reliability Engineering from the University of Maryland and has published over 60 journal and conference papers, multiple software packages, and holds 2 patents.