Zahra Mohaghegh
Zahra Mohaghegh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering in the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). She is also an affiliate to Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, School of Information Sciences, the Illinois Informatics Institute, and the Carle Illinois College of Medicine at UIUC.
Mohaghegh established the Socio-Technical Risk Analysis (SoTeRiA) Research Laboratory (http://soteria.npre.illinois.edu/) at UIUC to advance risk science and applications for the safety of complex technological systems such as commercial nuclear power plants and advanced reactors, civil aviation, and oil industries.
Dr. Mohaghegh is serving as a member of the Committee on Transport Airplane Risk Assessment Methodology of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She has conducted research and published widely on probabilistic risk assessment, probabilistic physics of failure analysis, human-system reliability modeling, risk-informed decision making, and uncertainty analysis; benefiting from grants awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, nuclear power industry, and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Mohaghegh received the Zonta International Award for conducting aviation safety research; the George Apostolakis Award in risk assessment; the College of Engineering at Illinois Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research; and the American Nuclear Society Mary Jane Oestmann Professional Women’s Achievement Award for her pioneering in the introduction of human and organizational factors into the risk analysis of socio-technical systems in nuclear and other high-risk industries.
Dr. Mohaghegh is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Association for Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management (IAPSAM) and served as the Technical Chair for the 2013 American Nuclear Society Risk Management topical meeting; the Academic Chair for the 2017 International Topical Meeting on Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Analysis (PSA 2017); the Senior Advisory Board Member for the PSA 2021; and a reviewer of a consensus study report of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on Technical Feasibility of a Wheelchair Securement Concept for Airline Travel.