A brief abstract of his talk, entitled “Communication and Civic Competence,” is below, along with a short bio.

Citizens’ ability to make effective decisions about technical issues depends, in part, on technical experts’ ability to provide relevant information in a concise, comprehensible form. Fulfilling this duty to inform requires individuals with distinct expertise, those who know the subject matter, those who can extract the critical facts, those who can render them meaningful, and those who can create communication links. Using their skills in the best possible way allows establishing the envelope of civic competence and the role of paternalistic institutions in society. The talk will discuss these general issues, in light of several case studies and the opportunities for research universities, like Purdue.

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 its 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 World Federation of Scientists Permanent Monitoring Panel on Terrorism; and the National Intelligence Council Global Expertise Reserve Program.  He was a founding member of the Eugene Commission on the Rights of Women and the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Advisory Committee.  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).