Faculty Directory

Katrina Groth is a Professor of Reliability Engineering at the University of Maryland. She is also the Director of the university’s Center for Risk and Reliability and the Reliability Engineering graduate degree program.

Groth specializes in reliability and risk analysis of energy systems and has defined key engineering methods used to advance the reliability and safety of hydrogen fueling stations, electrolyzers, vehicles, gas pipelines, nuclear power plants, and more. Her current research includes developing quantitative risk assessment (QRA) methods to understand failure causes in novel hydrogen systems, investigating prognostics and health management (PHM) techniques to support diagnosis and reliability monitoring in complex systems, and creating reliability data collection frameworks and algorithms for emerging energy technologies. Previously, she was a Principal R&D Engineer at Sandia National Laboratories.

Groth has published over 250 papers and technical reports, one textbook, and multiple software packages, and her work has been cited more than 7,000 times. Her notable hydrogen activities include inventing the U.S. Department of Energy’s Hydrogen Risk Assessment Models (HyRAM) toolkit and the Hydrogen Component Reliability Database (HyCReD), serving as an expert witness in equipment failure, fire, and explosion investigations, conducting QRAs for many types of hydrogen systems, and leading working groups within ISO 19880-1, IEA, and USHA. Her notable nuclear research includes developing human reliability analysis (HRA) models that have informed nuclear regulation in the U.S., Japan, Korea and Switzerland, and inventing the SIPPRA methodology that connects the complex system-modeling techniques from Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA), the predictive data-driven techniques from PHM, and AI techniques to develop real-time risk monitoring algorithms for nuclear power plants, pipelines, ships, and hydrogen fueling stations.

Groth has received many awards, including a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the David Okrent Award for Nuclear Safety. She participated in the 2021 U.S. Frontiers of Engineering symposium, an invitation-only program that brings together the nation's most accomplished early-career engineers from industry, academia, and government. She has been listed as one of the world’s top 2% of scientists since 2022. In 2025, Groth received the University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Research, the highest honor presented by the Board of Regents to exemplary faculty members in the state of Maryland, and the C3E Catalyzing Energy Education & Excellence Award from the DOE, MIT, ASU, and Stanford.

Groth holds a PhD and MS in Reliability Engineering and a BS in Engineering from the University of Maryland. Groth is an active and engaged educator, and committed mentor for all of her students, and an advocate for women and first-generation students in engineering. She brings a combination of passion, clarity, and deep real-world experience to her classes, and believes that risk assessment needs to be in every engineer's toolbox.

Education

• Ph.D., Reliability Engineering, University of Maryland, 2009
• M.S., Reliability Engineering, University of Maryland, 2008
• B.S., Engineering, University of Maryland, 2004

Honors and Awards

• C3E Catalyzing Energy Education & Excellence Award, DOE, MIT, ASU, Stanford, 2025
• USM Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Research, 2025
• ASME Rising Star of Mechanical Engineering, 2024
• IMechE Donald Julius Groen Prize for Safety and Reliability, Nov. 2024
• University of Maryland Research Impact Fellow, 2024-2025
• 2024 Junior Faculty Outstanding Research Award, A. James Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland, May 2024
• World’s top 2% scientists (based on previous single-year citation) by the Elsevier (Stanford University) list, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025.
• “Paper of Distinction” at in the ASME IDETC/CIE conference 2023 Design Automation Conference (DAC)
• Early Career Distinguished Alumni, University of Maryland, A. James Clark School of Engineering, Sept. 2022, (Inaugural class of Early Career Distinguished Alumni Society inductees), recognizes 25 Clark School alumni 40 years old and younger who are “at the forefront of their respective fields and who have demonstrated excellence in leadership, innovation, entrepreneurship and service”
• Landis Young Member Engineering Achievement Award, American Nuclear Society, 2022 "in recognition of sustained technical excellence in nuclear safety, probabilistic risk assessment, and human reliability analysis"
• 2021 US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium, September 2021
• NSF CAREER  Award, U.S. National Science Foundation, 2021
• David Okrent Award for Nuclear Safety, American Nuclear Society, 2021
• Best Early Career Paper, International Symposium on Structural Health Monitoring and Nondestructive Testing Conference (SHM-NDT 2020), 2020
• #4 most cited paper in the International Journal of Hydrogen Safety (and the #1 paper on hydrogen safety) of over 2900 papers published in IJHE in 2019
• DOE Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Program R&D Award “for outstanding leadership and technical contribution to hydrogen safety and risk assessment” in Safety, Codes, and Standards, June, 2016
• Sandia National Laboratories’ Public Good Innovator Award for HyRAM 1.0, May 2016
• Robert Schefer Memorial Best Paper Award,“HyRAM: A methodology and toolkit for Quantitative Risk Assessment of Hydrogen Systems,” International Conference on Hydrogen Safety (ICHS), Tokyo, Japan, October, 2015
• George Apostolakis Early Career Fellowship Award “in recognition of early career accomplishments and contributions to the field of Probabilistic Safety Assessment,” International Association for Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management (IAPSAM), Helsinki, Finland, 2012

Selected Professional Service

• Associate Editor, ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, May 2023 - present May 2029
•  Editorial Board, Journal of Safety Science and Resilience Apr. 2026 - present
• Editorial Board, Hydrogen Economy and Engineering, 2025-present
• Maryland Clean Cities & Communities (MDCC&C) Advisory Board, Nov. 2025 - present
• Board, International Conference on Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management (PSAM), Dec.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  2024 - present
• Board of Trustees, National Atomic Museum Foundation, Albuquerque, NM, 2016 - 2025
• Associate Editor, Nuclear Science and Engineering, 2021 - 2023
• Editorial Board, Reliability Engineering & System Safety, 2020 - 2024
• Technical Program Committee, International Conference on Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management, 2012-present
• Technical Program Committee, European Society for Reliability Annual Meeting (ESREL), 2015-present 
• Organizer, ASME - UMD workshop on PHM Approach for Complex Engineering Systems (PACES) College Park, MD
• Organizer, R3Data workshop - Harnessing data for enhanced understanding of risk, reliability, andresilience.  College Park, MD, May 7-8, 2019.
• Member (Elected), ANS Nuclear Installations Safety Division (NISD) Executive Committee, 2019 - 2022
• Associate Technical Chair, International Conference on Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management (PSAM 14), Los Angeles, CA, Sep. 16-21, 2018
• Associate Editor, Reliability and Maintainability Symposium (RAMS), 2015 - 2018
• Co-chair, Sub-task on safety methodology and distances, ISO TC197 WG24, 2014 - 2017
• Scientific Advisory Board, 1st International Conference on Human Error, Reliability, Resilience, and Performance (HERPP), 2017
• Leader, Task A (safety integration toolkits), International Energy Agency Hydrogen Implementing Agreement, IEA/HIA Task 37, 2014 - 2017

Society Memberships

• American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
• American Nuclear Society (ANS)
• International Association for Hydrogen Energy (IAHE) - Founding member of Hydrogen Safety Division
• Society for Risk Analysis (SRA)
• Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Reliability Society - Senior Member
• Tau Beta Pi, Engineering Honors Society

• ENRE 602 - Reliability Analysis
  • A first-year graduate course open to all engineering majors and required for all Reliability Engineering majors. This course provides an overview of the techniques, methods, and models methods used in various aspects of reliability engineering. Probabilistic modeling; probabilistic definition of reliability; use of data to assess model parameters; Principal methods of reliability analysis, including fault tree and reliability block diagrams; Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA); event tree construction and evaluation; reliability data collection and analysis; Bayesian analysis; parameter estimation. Focus on problems related to mechanical systems, process plants, energy systems and infrastructures, and other engineered systems.
• ENRE 447 - Fundamentals of Reliability Engineering
  • A senior-level undergraduate engineering elective open to all STEM majors. This course provides a general survey of the techniques of reliability engineering with a focus on theoretical basis and quantitative methods, with frequent examples of application. Topics covered include: failure modes and effects analysis, mathematical definition of reliability, probabilistic models to represent failure phenomena, statistical life models for non-repairable components, reliability data analysis, and system reliability models including fault trees, event trees.  Students will learn how to apply these techniques to problems related to engineering systems, with example cases for process plants, energy systems and infrastructure.