Riccardo Cappa Receives Early Career Award
Simpson Gumpertz & Heger (SGH) Consulting Engineer Riccardo Cappa received the Heki Shibata Early Career Award at the Structural Mechanics in Reactor Technology No. 26 Conference (SMiRT-26), held in Berlin, Germany from 10 – 15 July 2022. Riccardo was one of three awardees in recognition of his paper and oral presentation, “Loss of Offsite Power Seismic Fragility Guidance.” Named after Professor Heki Shibata, the award is to “identify and recognize outstanding work of early career professionals.”
Pictured: Riccardo Cappa(center) accepting the Heki Shibata Early Career Award from Conference Chair, Jörg Aign (right), and Conference Technical Committee Chair, Hamid Sadegh-Azar (left).
Riccardo authored the paper with SGH Associate Principal Frederic (Fred) Grant, SGH Senior Principal Gregory (Greg) Hardy, and Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) Technical Executive John Richards. The paper investigates the use of earthquake experience data to revise the conventional loss of offsite power fragility used in nuclear seismic probabilistic risk assessments. EPRI sponsored the research, while Fred and Greg led the SGH team.
This year marked the 50th anniversary of this bi-annual international conference, which brings together worldwide leaders, managers, engineers, plant operators, regulators, and academics working in the nuclear power industry. The program included more than 460 presentations focused on improving worldwide nuclear safety, streamlining licensing efforts, and discussing the challenges and opportunities of next-generation nuclear plants.
Clockwise from lower left: SGH’s Derrick Watkins, Fred Grant, Greg Hardy, Asa Bassam, Riccardo Cappa, and EPRI’s John Richards celebrate at the conference’s gala dinner.
SGH has historically been a key participant at SMiRT conferences. Numerous staff members from SGH’s Engineering Mechanics & Infrastructure Group participated in this year’s event. Asa Bassam, Riccardo Cappa, Siavash Dorvash, Timothy Graf, Fred Grant, Greg Hardy, Derrick Watkins, and Mohamed Talaat collectively contributed fifteen presentations.
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