Kimberly M. Thompson, ScD
Adjunct Professor of Risk Analysis and Decision Science
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Biography
Dr. Thompson is President of Kid Risk, Inc. (www.kidrisk.org), President of AORM, LLC (www.aorm.com) and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, where she created and directed the Kids Risk Project. Kid Risk, Inc., a non-profit organization, aims to empower kids, parents, and policy makers to make better decisions when managing children’s risks. Professor Thompson's research interests and teaching focus on the issues related to developing and applying quantitative methods for risk assessment and risk management, and consideration of the public policy implications associated with including uncertainty and variability in risk characterization. As the use of quantitative analysis continues to grow, Professor Thompson looks at how the type of analysis used (e.g., cost-effectiveness analysis, cost-benefit analysis, decision analysis, value-of-information analysis, risk-only or health-only analysis, etc.) influences and determines the policy outcome. Drawing on a diverse background, she seeks to effectively integrate technological, social, political, legal, and economic issues into risk analyses that inform public policy and improve decision making in what she calls the "Age of Risk Management." Building on her broad training, she focuses on the characterization of information and effective risk communication, and she brings extensive experience working with news media and communicating risks to a wide range of stakeholders into the classroom. Professor Thompson's work currently focuses heavily on system dynamics and dynamic modeling, particularly in the context of modeling policies for polio risk management after the success of global eradication. In 2008, Dr. Thompson received the Jay Wright Forrester Award from the System Dynamics Society for some of her research on polio, and in 2004 the Society for Risk Analysis awarded her its Chauncey Starr Distinguished Young Risk Analyst Award. A popular speaker, Dr. Thompson is a Fellow and Past-President of the Society for Risk Analysis, and she served as a Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer from 2003-5. Dr. Thompson is the author of the book Risk In Perspective: Insight and Humor in the Age of Risk Management and over 100 scholarly publications. She received her Doctor of Science degree from the Harvard School of Public Health and her Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.