Baruch Fischhoff, PhD

Biography

Baruch Fischhoff, Ph.D., is Howard Heinz University Professor, in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences and Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, where he heads the Decision Sciences major. A graduate of the Detroit Public Schools, he holds a BS in mathematics and psychology from Wayne State University and an MA and PhD in psychology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and has served on many NAS/NRC/IOM committees. He is a past President of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making and of the Society for Risk Analysis, and recipient of its Distinguished Achievement Award. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Society and of the American Psychological Association, and recipient of it Early Career Awards for Distinguished Scientific Contribution to Psychology and for Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest. He is a member of the Environmental Protection Agency Scientific Advisory Board, where he chairs the Homeland Security Advisory Committee; the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Advisory Committee, and the World Federation of Scientists Permanent Monitoring Panel on Terrorism. He chairs the Food and Drug Administration Risk Communication Advisory Committee. He was a founding member of the Eugene, Oregon, Commission on the Rights of Women. His research includes risk communication, analysis and management; adolescent decision making; informed consent; security; and environmental protection.  He has co-authored or edited four books, Acceptable Risk (1981), A Two-State Solution in the Middle East: Prospects and Possibilities (1993), Preference Elicitation (1999), and Risk Communication: The Mental Models Approach (2001).