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Join Us in Pittsburgh for PSAM 18!

We invite you to join us Sunday July 19 to Friday July 24, 2026, in Pittsburgh for the 18th installment of the biannual Probabilistic Safety Assessment & Management (PSAM) conference. The PSAM conference is the premiere international conference in risk, risk management, reliability, safety, and associated topics. Highlights include the latest research and practice in probabilistic risk assessment and human reliability analysis.

Pittsburgh: A Historic Hub for Safety Research

Pittsburgh is a vibrant city with deep roots in risk and safety. Pittsburgh was formerly known as the Steel City (a name proudly immortalized in the famous Pittsburgh Steelers football team). Arguably the first safety research center in the U.S. was created in 1910 in Pittsburgh as the U.S. Bureau of Mines, a non-regulatory federal research agency focused on improving mine safety. Over the ensuing century, Pittsburgh has become synonymous with applied safety research across many domains as the home to leading organizations like Westinghouse Electric Corporation, National Energy Technology Laboratory, Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory, US Steel, PPG, MSA Safety, and Kraft Heinz, not to mention regionally dozens of universities including world-renowned Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh. We plan to include tour opportunities and speakers from these organizations to help you appreciate the ongoing significance of Pittsburgh in risk and safety.

Beyond its research heritage, Pittsburgh offers rich cultural attractions and world-class professional sports. Visitors can explore the renowned Carnegie Museums, catch a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball game at PNC Park (consistently ranked among America’s most beautiful ballparks), or experience the city’s thriving arts and theater scene. The city’s transformation from industrial powerhouse to cultural destination makes it an exciting place to explore during your visit.

A Grand Venue

The conference will be held at the stately Omni William Penn Hotel, right in downtown Pittsburgh. Lauded as the grandest hotel in the nation upon its opening in 1916, a beautiful art deco expansion in the 1920s made it the second largest hotel in the world at that time. We have secured a very attractive room rate and encourage you to take advantage of the chance to join us in this beautifully historic yet fully modernized hotel.

Featured Topics: AI and Advanced Nuclear Power

Fittingly, Pittsburgh was home to two of the founders of artificial intelligence, Allen Newell and Herbert Simon, who helped understand human cognition and then emulate it in computers with AI programs like the General Problem Solver. Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse led development of the nation’s first pressurized water reactors, which paved the way for nuclear power applications across the world. We are organizing sessions around these two hot topics—AI and advanced nuclear power—and encourage you to share your knowledge and learn from world innovators in these topics.

Join the PSAM Tradition!

Of course, one of the strengths of the PSAM conference has always been its breadth of topics. We encourage researchers and practitioners across all domains where safety and risk are important to propose talks and sessions. PSAM is a great place to learn about new areas and build bridges through our shared knowledge.

We encourage students, researchers, and practitioners to attend and present at PSAM. PSAM offers flexible formats, from panels and talks without accompanying published papers, to papers published in our peer-reviewed open access proceedings. Additionally, we have negotiated several special journal issues to capture expanded versions of your PSAM papers. Submit your proposal for a session or presentation by March 1, 2026. International participants requiring visas should submit early to allow sufficient time for invitation letters from the conference organization.

PSAM has become a venerable tradition. It represents a right-sized forum for the risk and safety community to come together every two years—to network, to learn, to be inspired, and to set the course for the future for safety and risk. We look forward to continuing this tradition with you in Pittsburgh!