F25 GIRS Seminars: Hydrogen Research Initiatives at CEERMA-UFPE: A Risk and Reliability Overview

When: Thursday, October 23, 2025
Time: 1:00pm PT
Where: (In-Person) UCLA Engineering 6 BLDG, Rm 580B and ZOOM

Caio Souto Maior

Abstract: Global energy consumption has increased remarkably over the last decade due to population growth and improvements in living standards. However, most of the total energy is produced by fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases. In this context, hydrogen has drawn significant interest in energy sustainability. As hydrogen can be transported and stored in high-pressure pipelines, tanks, and cryogenic vessels, safety requirements and studies are crucial. Therefore, the Center for Risk Analysis, Reliability Engineering, and Environmental Modeling (CEERMA) at the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), Brazil, has been addressing various research challenges related to hydrogen within the context of risk and reliability. The initiatives involve machine learning for prognostic and health management, risk analysis for energy production, and natural language processing for report understanding. The seminar will address some of the projects developed at CEERMA and discuss the potential goals for further collaboration.

Short Bio: Caio Souto Maior is an Assistant Professor from the Technology Center at UFPE (Brazil) and a researcher at CEERMA-UFPE. He holds a doctorate (2020) in Industrial Engineering (Reliability Engineering) from UFPE. Dr. Maior is a regular attendee of ESREL, PSAM, and PHM conferences, and he publishes in journals such as Reliability Engineering & System Safety (RESS), Process Safety and Environmental Protection, the Journal of Risk & Reliability, and the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal PLOS ONE and a regular reviewer for journals such as RESS, Safety Science, and IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics. He is a member of the Graduate Program in Industrial Engineering and the Graduate Program on Nuclear and Energy Technology at UFPE. He serves as an advisor in the Human Resources program of Brazil’s National Agency for Petroleum, Natural Gas, and Biofuels. He is involved in research projects with several Brazilian companies in the energy sector. Over the last year, Prof. Maior has been working as a Visiting Scholar at the B. John Garrick Institute for the Risk Sciences at UCLA, focusing on Prognostic and Health Management, Machine Learning (quantum, deep, machine), and applications in the energy sector.