At the 32^nd European Safety & Reliability Conference (ESREL 2022) held in August 2022, Prof. Michael Beer was elected as the Chair of the European Safety & Reliability Association (ESRA), with a term of four years.

Prof. Beer received his B.S, M.S and Ph.D. degrees from Technische Universität Dresden in 1993, 1995 and 2001 respectively. After completing his studies, Beer went to Rice University, USA, to engage in post-doctoral research (2002-2003). After that, Beer worked in the National University of Singapore and Liverpool University, and returned to Germany in 2011 after appointed as professor at Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität Hannover and Director of the Institute of Risk and Reliability. He has been engaged in probabilistic design and risk assessment of civil engineering, imprecise probability problems and other research work for a long time, and has made a series of internationally renowned academic contributions. Prof. Beer is now the editor-in-chief of Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems.

ESRA was launched as a permanent entity in 1986, and is a non-profit international association for the advance and application of safety and reliability technology in all areas of human endeavor. Past chairs of ESRA in this millennium includes:

•    999~2001: Jean-Pierre Signoret, fellow of French Atomic Energy Commission, France;

• 2001~2005: Carlos Guedes-Soares, professor of Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal, former editor-in-chief of Reliability Engineering & System Safety;

• 2005~2010: Ioannis Papazoglou, fellow of National Centre of Scientific Research “Demokritos”, Greece；

• 2010~2014: Enrico Zio, professor of Politecnico di Milano, Italy;

• 2014~2018: Terje Aven, professor of University of Stavanger, Norway;

• 2018~2022: Marko Čepin, professor of University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Since 1992, the ESRA has hosted an ESREL every year. The 32nd ESREL was just held in Dublin, Ireland, from August 28 to September 1 this year. The chairman of the conference was Prof. Simon Wilson of Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. During this conference, the Executive Committee of the ESRA jointly elected Prof. Beer as the new chair of the ESRA.

Prof. Beer is one of the international partner representatives to initiate the International Joint Research Center for Engineering Reliability and Stochastic Mechanics (JCERSM) at Tongji University since 2015, and has been the international junction professor of JCERSM since then.

Written by Meng-Ze Lyu

Checked by Jian-Bing Chen

and Yong-Bo Peng

August 31, 2022