Douglas C. Wood Vice President of Advent Engineering, Ann Arbor, Michigan has been named the General Chair of the Probabilistic Safety Assessment Topical Meeting to be held in Detroit October 6-10, 2002. This conference will explore advances in probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) techniques and focus on use of risk informed approaches and related issues. It is being co-sponsored by the Michigan Section and the Nuclear Installation Safety Division of the American Nuclear Society (ANS).

According to Wood, "Although the conference has a nuclear-oriented sponsor, the techniques and benefits to be discussed at this conference will apply to any industry with an interest in improving or assessing reliability and risk and which wants to make risk-informed business and engineering decisions."

Dr. George Apostolakis, Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and current Chair of the prestigious Advisory Committee on Reactor Safety for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will be the Technical Program Chair for the conference. He commented, "Doug has over 25 years of PRA, reliability, and related risk-informed expertise and will be a valuable asset to the success of this conference."

The Conference will take place at the Hotel Pontchartrain in downtown Detroit. Mr. Wood and Joseph Conen, Principal Engineer, Nuclear Assessment, of Detroit Edison's Fermi 2 Power Plant will head the planning committee. Other members of the planning committee include Linda Bugoci, Bill Lipton, Philip Czech, and Lynne Goodman of Detroit Edison, Jim Baciak of the University of Michigan, Gerry Hepburn of Temporary Technical Services, and Rebecca Steinman also of Advent Engineering.