Teaching engineers to design safer and more reliable aircraft, automobiles and other complex engineering systems is the goal of Vanderbilt University's new program. The Multidisciplinary Training in Reliability and Risk Engin-eering and Management program will focus education and research on ways to predict the perform-ance and reliability of complex systems and equipment. Funded by a $2.7 million National Science Foundation grant, the graduate training program will be the first in the world to study and develop multidisciplinary mathematical approaches to assessing and managing risk and reliability, says Sankaran Mahadevan, principal investigator of the program. The program's research will be focused in three areas: large systems reli-ability and risk, device and component reliability, and uncertainty analysis methods.