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Michelle (Shelby) Bensi, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Maryland (UMD), has won the 2025 Mary Jane Oestmann Professional Women’s Achievement Award, which is given each year by the American Nuclear Society (ANS). She is one of two 2025 recipients, together with Askin Guler Yigitoglu from Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The honor recognizes outstanding personal dedication and technical achievement by a woman for work she has performed in the fields of nuclear science, engineering, research, or education. Bensi received the award for her contributions to the advancement of probabilistic assessment of natural hazards at nuclear plant sites, the ANS said.
She will be formally recognized at the 2025 ANS Winter Conference and Expo, to be held November 9-12 in Washington, D.C.
“I am honored to receive the Mary Jane Oestmann Professional Women’s Achievement Award from the ANS,” Bensi said. “This recognition affirms the importance of the work my colleagues, students, and I are doing to advance probabilistic approaches to better understand and mitigate risks that natural hazards pose to nuclear power plants. I look forward to continuing to contribute to the safety and resilience of nuclear energy.”
A UMD faculty member since 2017, Bensi heads the Risk-Informed Solutions in Engineering (RISE) Laboratory, which is conducting a variety of projects related to seismic activity, inland flooding, precipitation, storm surge, and compound hazards, with a particular eye for their impacts on the nuclear industry.
She is a 2021 recipient of a National Science Foundation Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, which is supporting her efforts to close existing gaps in hazard assessment by developing new tools and strategies for quantifying complex types of risk. Some of the approaches she is pioneering employ Bayesian models and incorporate machine learning and AI.
Bensi is also an affiliate associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and a faculty affiliate of its Center for Risk and Reliability, where she collaborates with colleagues such as mechanical engineering faculty members Katrina Groth and Mohammed Modarres on innovative ways to assess nuclear risks.
September 25, 2025
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