Groth Promoted to Full Professor

Katrina Groth, a faculty member in reliability engineering in the University of Maryland’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and associate director of the Center for Risk and Reliability, has been promoted to the rank of Full Professor.

The promotion caps a semester that also saw Groth receive the University System of Maryland’s (USM) Board of Regents Faculty Award, the highest honor that USM bestows on faculty.

Professor Harry Dankowicz, the department’s chair, announced the news on May 18, citing Groth’s outstanding contributions to her field.

“Katrina's success is a testament to her unparalleled drive toward impact, whether in cutting-edge scholarship, education, industry engagement, or policy development,” he said.

Groth, who joined the UMD faculty in 2017 after a seven-year stint at Sandia National Laboratories, is an expert on risk analysis, especially as it pertains to energy and transportation technologies, such as hydrogen fueling stations, electrolyzers, pipelines, and nuclear power plants.

She is the recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER Award that supports her efforts to improve risk analysis by fusing two distinct approaches, known as probabilistic risk assessment and prognostics and health management.

In 2022, the American Nuclear Society awarded her its highly competitive Landis Young Member Engineering Achievement Award, and in 2024 she received a Junior Faculty Outstanding Research Award from UMD’s A. James Clark School of Engineering.

At the department, she is “a passionate champion for the vitality of our reliability engineering graduate programs and the advancement of breakthrough research in our Center for Risk and Reliability,” Dankowicz said.

Published May 27, 2025