See BakerRisk at the 2025 AIChE Spring Meeting / GCPS Conference

Karen Vilas, MBA

Ms. Vilas currently serves as CEO of BakerRisk and FORTRESS. Karen brings a rare combination of technical expertise, field-tested leadership, business strategy, and personal purpose to one of the most critical areas of industrial safety.

Recognized globally as a leader in process safety, her career has focused on helping multinational petrochemical corporations identify hazards, manage risk, and keep people safe. Most notably, she has experience in modeling consequences and risks at oil refineries, natural gas facilities, storage facilities, and olefin units. Known for her unwavering commitment to innovation and customer satisfaction, Ms. Vilas provides unique risk mitigation and risk management solutions by focusing on providing high-quality, highly protective buildings in high-hazard environments.

Jatin Shah, SCR, CCPS FELLOW

Mr. Shah is a member of BakerRisk’s Process Safety Group. His work focuses on Risk Management Services, including Quantitative Risk Assessments (QRA), Corporate Risk Management, and Risk-based Decision Support. Mr. Shah brings an extensive array of skills that includes Risk Management Process Improvement, Decision Analysis, Decision Criteria/Guideline Development, Risk Analysis and Quantification, and development of conceptual layout and equipment specification for toxic risk mitigation.

During his career, Mr. Shah has identified and evaluated cost-effective risk optimization alternatives that allow management to make informed risk management decisions and has helped clients optimize their risk management budgets.

Todd Drennen, PE

Mr. Drennen is a member of BakerRisk’s Process Safety Group. His work focuses on Process Safety Management (PSM) Consulting Services, including Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) and Layers of Protection Analysis (LOPA) facilitation (for both existing processes and capital projects), Sizing calculations and hydraulic studies for pressure relief devices and relief headers, Detailed dispersion modeling of pressure relief system discharges to the atmosphere using Safesite3G©, Development of guidelines and work processes for relief system design and analysis, Safety Integrity Level (SIL) determination, Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), and PSM Compliance Audits, serving the Oil & Gas, Chemical, Agricultural, and Energy industries.

For his PHA and LOPA facilitation work, he has utilized various methodologies including Hazards and Operability (HAZOP), What-If, Structured What-If (SWIF), Hazard Identification (HAZID), and Checklist techniques to evaluate hazardous process operations, new equipment designs, and process modifications, using PHA Pro, PHAWorks, Leader, and PHA-Tool© documentation software.

Peter Diakow, CFEI

Mr. Diakow is a member of BakerRisk’s Blast Effects group. His work focuses executing Facility Siting Studies (FSS), Quantitative Risk Assessments (QRA), Incident Investigations, and Dust Hazard Analyses (DHA). He has over a decade of experience in experimental testing and research with a focus on vapor cloud explosions, vented deflagrations, and deflagration to detonation transition (DDT). Mr. Diakow currently leads the Hydrogen group as part of BakerRisk’s Low Carbon Energy Risk Management services.

Darren Malik, PE, CFEI

Mr. Malik is a member of BakerRisk’s Blast Effects Group. Mr. Malik’s work focuses on the development and application of empirical, analytical, and numerical models for the characterization of flammability and explosion phenomena, supporting BakerRisk’s efforts to help our clients better understand their onsite hazards. Mr. Malik is also responsible for the coordination and oversight of all BakerRisk testing operations. This includes the materials laboratory at the corporate headquarters in San Antonio, the 160-acre Wilfred E Baker Test Facility (WEBTF), and the 2300-acre Box Canyon Test Facility (BCTF). As a certified fire and explosion investigator (CFEI). Mr. Malik supports and/or leads the investigation into accidental industrial fires and explosions as well as other near-miss incidents related.

Dr. Jin Zhao, PH.D., PE

Dr. Zhao is a member of BakerRisk’s Process Safety Group. Her work focuses on the consequence modeling of toxic releases and vapor cloud explosions. She has performed numerous facility siting studies, consequence analysis, and quantitative risk analysis studies at gas plants and petrochemical facilities, as well as in the fertilizer industry. Dr. Zhao’s experience also incorporates Safety Instrumented System (SIS) design basis development and verification/validation projects. She has performed as facilitator and scribe on numerous Safety Integrity Level (SIL) assignments and performed quantitative reliability analysis to verify achievement of SIL targets calculations.

Eric Freiburger, PE

Mr. Freiburger is a remote team member of BakerRisk’s Process Safety Group. Throughout his career, his work has focused on engineering, process safety, EHS management, auditing, investigations, emergency preparedness/response, and crisis management. He is a recognized global expert in process safety and has led cross-industry efforts to develop, publish, and establish global guidelines and best practices. Mr. Freiburger has held executive positions in several multinational corporations and has developed and managed global standards and teams to improve safety performance.