Dr. Frank J. Groen is the deputy chief of NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA). He is responsible for executive leadership, policy direction, functional management and coordination for agencywide program and institutional Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA) activities.

Before becoming the OSMA deputy chief, Groen was the director of the Safety and Assurance Requirements Division within OSMA, responsible for the development and maintenance of NASA directives and standards pertaining to SMA, as well as related methods, tools and guidance. Previously, he worked in OSMA as the manager for Reliability and Maintainability (R&M) and also served as OSMA’s lead for various other program areas including NASA’s human rating requirements. Before joining NASA, Groen was active in academia and industry, where he focused on method and tool development in the field of reliability and risk assessment, with a focus on Bayesian data analysis, accident scenario modeling and analysis, and Monte Carlo simulation.

He received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in reliability engineering from the University of Maryland in 2000 and a Master of Science degree in mechanical engineering from the Delft University of Technology, Netherlands.