Plenary Sessions & Speakers
Mario Brito
Professor Mario Brito is Chair of Risk Analysis and Risk Management at the University of Southampton, where he has been an academic since 2015. He holds a PhD in Safety-Critical Systems Assurance from the University of Bristol (2005–2008), where he developed decision-support systems for compliance with the IEC 61508-3 software safety standard. With a background in Aeronautical Engineering, his early research focused on risk and reliability methods for complex systems.
He joined the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) in 2008 as a Research Fellow in Risk and Reliability of Autonomous Systems. Working with colleagues, he developed the Subjective Statistical Survival Estimator, a methodology for assessing the risk of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) operating in extreme environments such as beneath the Antarctic and Arctic ice. This framework supported decision-making for the 2009 Autosub-3 mission beneath the Pine Island Glacier—still the longest recorded AUV mission under the Antarctic ice shelf. He was later invited by Defence Research and Development Canada to conduct the risk analysis for the ISE Explorer AUV mission beneath the Arctic ice, which covered over 10,000 km—the longest mission of its kind to date (Risk Analysis, 2010; Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 2012).
At NOC, Professor Brito also managed several major research initiatives, including the Marine Autonomous Systems in Support of Marine Observations (MASSMO) project (£800K) and phase one of the Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) on Adaptive Autonomous Ocean Sampling Networks (£1.45M). He was Principal Investigator for the Horizon 2020 BRIDGES project (€1.8M), leading Work Package 7, and PI for a Knowledge Transfer Partnership with ASV Ltd (£166K) on risk and reliability methods for unmanned marine surface vehicles (UMSVs).
From July 2022 to July 2025, he served as Head of the Department of Decision Analytics and Risk at Southampton Business School, leading 42 academics, overseeing eight MSc and one BSc programme, and initiating the development of a new BSc in Business and Artificial Intelligence. Between 2018 and 2022, he was Programme Leader for the MSc Risk Management programmes. Professor Brito teaches Project Risk Management and Quantitative Methods for Risk Management. His research group currently includes 10 PhD students advancing risk science in areas such as security, aviation, infrastructure, maritime operations, logistics, agriculture, and healthcare.
His research has been published in leading international journals, including Risk Analysis, Safety Science, Reliability Engineering and System Safety, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, and the Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology. He serves on the Editorial Board of the ASCE–ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems (Parts A & B) and was General Chair of the 33rd European Safety and Reliability Conference (ESREL 2023).