Faculty Directory

Katrina M. Groth is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and the Director of the Reliability Engineering program at the University of Maryland. Groth specializes in safety, risk, and reliability analysis of energy systems. She has an active portfolio of research, including developing of Quantitative Risk Assessment methods to provide insights into dominant failure causes in novel hydrogen technologies, investigating prognostics and health management (PHM) techniques to support reliability monitoring and diagnosis of complex systems, and creating reliability data collection frameworks and algorithms. Her work has influenced safety practices and codes and standards for hydrogen fueling stations, hydrogen storage and electrolyzers, fuel cell forklifts, gas pipelines, nuclear power plants, and more.  She invented the DOE’s HyRAM toolkit for hydrogen risk assessment, which is used by engineers worldwide to inform hydrogen safety, codes, and standards, including NFPA 2 and ISO 19880-1. Her work has been cited over 4,000 times and she has been recognized with numerous awards including an NSF CAREER award, a DOE Hydrogen Program R&D Award,  the David Okrent Award for Nuclear Safety, and the Landis Young Member Engineering Achievement award.

Prior to joining UMD, Groth served as Principal R&D Engineer at Sandia National Laboratories, where she led multiple projects in probabilistic risk assessment, human reliability analysis and hydrogen safety, codes, and standards. Groth developed HyRAM (hyram.sandia.gov), a risk assessment and consequence analysis framework for hydrogen infrastructure, designed to put the state-of-the-art in hydrogen safety science into the hands of codes and standards developers. HyRAM integrates analytical models, experimental data, historical data, simulations, and techniques from risk assessment, fire science, and fluid dynamics. HyRAM was a critical tool in enabling harmonization of requirements beween the United States and international safety standards for hydrogen fueling stations (NFPA 2 and ISO 19880-1) and continues to be used today in the development of safe hydrogen technologues.

Groth has published over 175 papers and archival technical reports, created multiple software packages, and holds 2 patents. Her work has received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), GTI Energy (formerly Gas Technology Institute), and national laboratories (including Sandia National Laboratories, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, and the German Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM; Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung)), and private industry.

Groth is an active and engaged educator, and committed mentor for all of her students, and an advocate for women and minorities in engineering. Groth is also a trustee for the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History in Albuquerque, NM. She brings a combination of passion 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

• ASME Rising Star of Mechanical Engineering (2024)
• Donald Julius Groen Prize by the IMechE Safety and Reliability Board, 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.
• “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"
• Participant, 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 -May 2026
• Board of Trustees, National Atomic Museum Foundation, Albuquerque, NM, 2016 - present
• 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

Risk analysis, quantitative risk assessment, system safety, human reliability analysis, causality, human-machine teams, decision making under uncertainty, Bayesian Networks, Bayesian methods, complex systems.

Applications in: hydrogen safety, hydrogen fueling stations, fuel cells, natural gas, pipelines, energy, transportation, infrastructure, and nuclear power plants.

• 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.

See my Google Scholar Profile for full list including journal papers, conference papers, and technical reports: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=KLstwMcAA

Books & Book Chapters

• Mohammad Modarres and Katrina Groth. Apr. 2023. Reliability and Risk Analysis. What Every Engineer Should Know. 2nd. CRC Press. 498 pp. ISBN: 9781032309729. doi: 10.1201/9781003307495.
• Katrina M. Groth and Ahmad Al-Douri. Feb. 2023. “Hydrogen safety, risk, and reliability analysis.” In: Hydrogen Economy: Processes, Supply Chain, Life Cycle Analysis, and Energy Transition for Sustainability. Ed. by Antonio Scipioni, Alessandro Mandardo, and Jingzheng Ren. Academic Press. Chap. 15, pp. 487–510. ISBN: 978-0-323-99514-6. doi:10.1016/B978-0-323-99514-6.00012-1.

Journal Papers (Last update, Oct 2023):

• Ramin Moradi, Andres Ruiz-Tagle, Enrique Lopez Droguett, and Katrina Groth. Oct. 2023. “Toward a Framework for Risk Monitoring of Complex Engineering Systems with Online Operational Data: A Deep Learning-Based Solution.” Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part O: Journal of Risk and Reliability 237.5.
• Austin D. Lewis and Katrina M. Groth. Aug. 2023. “A comparison of DBN model performance in SIPPRA health monitoring based on different data stream discretization methods.” Reliability Engineering & System Safety 236, p. 109206.
• Colin A. Schell, Ernest Lever, and Katrina M. Groth. Aug. 2023. “Strain-based design and assessment for pipeline integrity management: A review of applications and gaps.” International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 204, p. 104973.
• Ahmad Al-Douri, Camille Levine, and Katrina M. Groth. July 2023. “Identifying Human Failure Events (HFEs) for External Hazard Probabilistic Risk Assessment.” Reliability Engineering & System Safety 235, p. 109236.
• Ahmad Al-Douri, Andres Ruiz-Tagle, and Katrina M. Groth. June 12, 2023. “A Quantitative Risk Assessment of Hydrogen Fuel Cell Forklifts.” International Journal of Hydrogen Energy 48.50, pp. 19340–19355.
• Douglas M. Osborn and Katrina M. Groth. May 2023. “Special issue on Nuclear Physical Security Risk and Uncertainty Analysis.” Nuclear Science and Engineering 197.sup1, pp. iii–iv.
• Stephen Thomas and Katrina M. Groth. Apr. 2023. “Toward a hybrid causal framework for autonomous vehicle safety analysis.” Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part O: Journal of Risk and Reliability 237.2. pp. 367–388.
• Ahmad Al-Douri, Mahmoud M. El-Halwagi, and Katrina M. Groth. Dec. 2022. “Emergency shutdowns of propylene production plants: Root cause analysis and availability modeling.” Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 80, p. 104921.
• Andres Ruiz-Tagle, Enrique Lopez Droguett, and Katrina M. Groth. Dec. 2022. “A Novel Probabilistic Approach to Counterfactual Reasoning in System Safety.” Reliability Engineering & System Safety 228, p. 108785.
• Austin D. Lewis and Katrina M. Groth. July 2022. "Metrics for evaluating the performance of complex engineering system health monitoring models." Reliability Engineering & System Safety, 223, 108473.
• Andres Ruiz-Tagle, Austin D. Lewis, Colin Schell, Ernest Lever, and Katrina M. Groth. July 2022. “BaNTERA: A Bayesian Network for Third-Party Excavation Risk Assessment.” Reliability Engineering & System Safety 223, p. 108507.
• Ramin Moradi, Sergio Cofre-Martel, Enrique Lopez Droguett, Mohammad Modarres, and Katrina M. Groth. June 2022. “Integration of deep learning and Bayesian networks for condition and operation risk monitoring of complex engineering systems." Reliability Engineering & System Safety, 222, 108433
• Andres Ruiz-Tagle, Enrique Lopez-Droguett, and Katrina M. Groth. Jun. 2022. "Exploiting the Capabilities of Bayesian Networks for Engineering Risk Assessment: Causal Reasoning through Interventions." Risk Analysis 42.6, pp. 1306-1324.
• Camila A. Correa-Jullian and Katrina M. Groth. May 19, 2022.  "Opportunities and Data Requirements for Data-Driven Prognostics and Health Management in Liquid Hydrogen Storage Systems." International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 47, 18748-18762.
• Madison West, Ahmad Al-Douri, Kevin Hartmann, William Buttner, and Katrina M. Groth.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  May 8, 2022. "Critical review and analysis of hydrogen safety data collection tools." International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 47, 17845-17858.
• Vincent P. Paglioni and Katrina M. Groth. Apr. 2022. "Dependency Definitions for Quantitative Human Reliability Analysis." Reliability Engineering & System Safety 220.4, p. 108274.
• Roohollah Heidary, Jubilee Prasad-Rao, and Katrina M. Groth. Mar. 2022, "Optimal Maintenance Policy for Corroded Oil and Gas Pipelines using Markov Decision Processes." International Journal of Prognostics and Health Management, 13.1.
• Camila Correa-Jullian and Katrina M. Groth. Jan. 2022. “Data Requirements for Improving the Quantitative Risk Assessment of Liquid Hydrogen Storage Systems.” International Journal of Hydrogen Energy 47.6, pp. 4222–4235.
• Roohollah Heidary and Katrina M. Groth. Oct. 2021. A hybrid population-based degradation model for pipeline pitting corrosion. Reliability Engineering & System Safety 214.
• Ramin Moradi and Katrina M. Groth. Dec. 2020. Modernizing risk assessment: A systematic integration of PRA and PHM techniques." Reliability Engineering & System Safety 204.
• Michelle T. Bensi and Katrina M. Groth. Nov. 2020. On the Value of Data Fusion and Model Integration for Generating Real-time Risk Insights for Nuclear Power." Progress in Nuclear Energy 129. Invited paper, p. 103497. issn: 0149-1970.
• Roohollah Heidary and Katrina M. Groth. July 2020. A hybrid model of internal pitting corrosion degradation under changing operational conditions for pipeline integrity management. Structural Health Monitoring 19 (4), pp. 1075-1091. 
• Austin D. Lewis and Katrina M. Groth. 2020. A Dynamic Bayesian Network Structure for, Joint Diagnostics and Prognostics of Complex Engineering Systems. Algorithms 13.3, Mar, 2020.
• Groth, Katrina M. Denman, Matthew R. Jones, Thomas B. Darling, Michael C. & Luger, George F. Building and using dynamic risk-informed diagnosis procedures for complex system accidents. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part O: Journal of Risk and Reliability. 234(1), Feb, 2020.

2010-2019

• Katrina M. Groth, Reuel Smith, and Ramin Moradi.  A hybrid algorithm for developing third generation HRA methods using simulator data, causal models, and cognitive science. Reliability Engineering and System Safety 191, Nov 2019.
• Moradi, Ramin and Groth, Katrina M. Hydrogen storage and delivery: Review of the state of the art technologies and risk and reliability analysis, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 44(23):12254–12269, May 2019.
• Darling, Michael C. Luger, George F. Jones, Thomas B. Denman, Matthew R. & Groth, Katrina M. Intelligent modeling for nuclear power plant accident management. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence Tools, 27(2), 2018.
• Heidary, Roohollah, Gabriel, Steven A. Modarres, Mohammad, Groth, Katrina M.& Vahdati, Nader. A review of data-driven oil and gas pipeline pitting corrosion growth models applicable for prognostic and health management. International Journal of Prognostics and Health Management, 9(1), 2018.
• Katrina M. Groth and Ethan S. Hecht. HyRAM: A methodology and toolkit for quantitative risk assessment of hydrogen systems. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy. 42(11): 7485-7493, March 2017.
• C. San Marchi, E. S. Hecht, I. W. Ekoto, K. M. Groth, C. LaFleur, B. P. Somerday, R. Mukundan, T. Rockward, J. Keller, and C. W. James. Overview of the DOE hydrogen safety, codes and standards program, part 3: Advances in research and development to enhance the scientific basis for hydrogen regulations, codes and standards. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 42(11): 7263-7274, March 2017.
• A. C. LaFleur, A. B. Muna, and K. M. Groth. Application of quantitative risk assessment for performance-based permitting of hydrogen fueling stations. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 42(11): 7529-7535, March 2017.
• T. Skjold, D. Siccama, H. Hisken, A. Brambilla, Prankul Middha, K. M. Groth, and A. C. LaFleur. 3D risk management for hydrogen installations. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 42(11): 7721-7730, March 2017.
• Kilian Zwirglmaier, Daniel Straub, and Katrina M. Groth. Capturing cognitive causal paths in human reliability analysis with Bayesian network models. Reliability Engineering & System Safety, 158:117-129, February 2017.
• Huafei Liao, Katrina Groth, and Susan Stevens-Adams. Challenges in leveraging existing human performance data for quantifying the IDHEAS HRA method. Reliability Engineering & System Safety, 144:159-169, December 2015.
• Katrina M. Groth, Curtis L. Smith, and Laura P. Swiler. A Bayesian method for using simulator data to enhance human error probabilities assigned by existing HRA methods. Reliability Engineering & System Safety, 128:32-40, 2014.
• Katrina M. Groth and Laura P. Swiler. Bridging the gap between HRA research and HRA practice: A Bayesian network version of SPAR-H. Reliability Engineering and System Safety, 115:33-42, July 2013.
• Katrina M. Groth and Ali Mosleh. A data-informed PIF hierarchy for model-based human reliability analysis. Reliability Engineering and System Safety, 108:154-174, December 2012.
• Jeffrey L. LaChance, Bobby Middleton, and Katrina M. Groth. Comparison of NFPA and ISO approaches for evaluating separation distances. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 37(22):17488-17496, November 2012.
• Katrina M. Groth and Ali Mosleh. Deriving causal Bayesian networks from human reliability analysis data: A methodology and example model. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part O: Journal of Risk and Reliability, 226:361-379, August 2012.
• Katrina Groth, Chengdong Wang, and Ali Mosleh. Hybrid causal methodology and software platform for probabilistic risk assessment and safety monitoring of socio-technical systems. Reliability Engineering & System Safety, 95(12):1276-1285, 2010.

Before 2010

• Takashi Kashiwagi, Fangming Du, Karen I. Winey, Katrina M. Groth, John R. Shields, Severine P. Bellayer, Hansoo Kim, and Jack F. Douglas. Flammability properties of polymer nanocomposites with single-walled carbon nanotubes: effects of nanotube dispersion and concentration. Polymer, 46(2):471-481, January 2005.
• Takashi Kashiwagi, Eric Grulke, Jenny Hilding, Katrina Groth, Richard Harris, Kathryn Butler, John Shields, Semen Kharchenko, and Jack Douglas. Thermal and flammability properties of polypropylene/carbon nanotube nanocomposites. Polymer, 45(12):4227-4239, May 2004.