Rick Paese has 13 years of nuclear industry experience and 3 years of human spaceflight operations experience. Rick is currently the lead human factors engineering (HFE) consultant within the Sargent & Lundy (S&L) Digital Modernization and Consulting group.  In this role, Rick is setting industry technical and regulatory precedents working with multiple utilities on all current major control room modernization projects.  He is the lead S&L engineer executing the control room modernization projects for the fleet of Southern Nuclear Company reactors, provides Independent Third-Party Reviews (ITPR) of client HFE strategies, provides consultation and guidance for HFE validation activities, and recently led an effort to prepare for an NRC audit on a utility’s control room validation activity.  Prior to S&L, Rick was the lead I&C and HFE licensing engineer for the Westinghouse AP1000 project and the overall technical licensing lead for the Westinghouse eVinci microreactor project.  As the lead AP1000 HFE licensing engineering, Rick developed key HFE documents and provided regulatory guidance for HFE activities. He authored several human factors-related License Amendment Requests (LARs), contributed to HFE verification and validation planning documents, and helped his organization prepare for and execute the AP1000 Integrated System Validation (ISV).  Rick is a member of the IEEE Working Group 5.2 on human factors engineering and the NEI Digital I&C Regulatory Task Force.