Let's Talk Risk

Dr. Sandra Alday is joined by professor of risk analysis and decision science, Robyn Wilson, to discuss how we perceive risks and make decisions.  

In the early hours of July 4, 2025, a torrent of 100 billion gallons of rain fell on Kerr County, Texas causing the Guadalupe River to rise meters in minutes. This tragedy was followed by intense flooding throughout the Midwest and northeast. In this episode, host of Let's Talk Risk, Dr. Sandra Alday, is joined by Dr. David Johnson of Purdue University to talk risk and rainfall as they try to understand recent flooding that has devasted parts of the country. 

On this episode of Let's Talk Risk, Robyn Wilson, Professor of Risk Analysis and Decision Science and Acting Associate Director of Research and Graduate Education, joins us to talk about the risks of developing a flexible and sensitive measure of risk perception. 

On this episode of Let's Talk Risk, Cameron MacKenzie, Associate Professor at the IMSE Department at Iowa State University, joins us to talk about the risks of mass shootings in schools, malls, churches, and other public venues. 

On this episode of Let’s Talk Risk, Professor Jun Zhuang, the Morton C. Frank Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Buffalo, joins to talk misinformation on social media. Zhuang breaks down what misinformation on social media is and why it’s important for us to think about.

Benjamin K. Sovacool, professor at Boston University, University of Sussex, and Aarhus University, joins the podcast to discuss his new research on climate geoengineering. Sovacool dives into the risk tradeoffs of carbon removal and solar radiation management. His research highlights different risks in the climate system, and the institutional, political, behavioral, social and cultural risks that accompany deployment of new technology. To close out the podcast, Sovacool shares the three policy implications from the study. 

Dr. David Johnson, professor of industrial engineering with a joint appointment of political science at Purdue University, joins Let’s Talk Risk to discuss his most recent work on the inequities and health impacts of flooding. States and communities struggle when thinking about how to better incorporate equity consideration into their planning process. To combat this, Johnson explains a new metric to evaluate projects that normalize the value of homes: treating all households the same. Instead of trying to prioritize projects based on protecting value, Johnson and his fellow researchers created an alternative metric that thinks about protecting households, irrespective of their value.

There are plenty of environmental issues plaguing the world today. Whether it’s climate change, water shortage or waste, it always boils down to one thing: consumption patterns. Prerna Shah, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication at the State University of New York at Buffalo, joins the podcast to share her and Dr. Janet Yang's research where they analyze whether communication can help dispel inaccurate beliefs on sustainable products and if it can drive people toward more positive behavior. 

Nicole Jackson, Ph.D., of Sandia National Labs, joins the Let’s Talk Risk podcast to talk about her work analyzing how extreme weather events and climate hazards impact physical infrastructures. Jackson shares her experiences on researching how long outages are and how many people were affected to get a sense of the duration of the event and the kind of magnitude of the event from a human perspective. This conversation covers how communities are equipped for extreme weather events, energy equity, resiliency of different countries, socio-economic factors, and more. 

Natalie Scala, associate professor at Towson University, joins the podcast to discuss her recent research on evaluating mail-based security for electoral processes. Since the 2020 Presidential Election took a dramatic shift, it was time to look at what was happening on the ground. When you strip the politics out, a fundamental question of the dramatic scale up of mail voting remains: Did mail-in voting introduce additional risks to the election process?

Jose Palma-Oliverira, professor at the University of Lisbon, joins the podcast to talk all things risk communication regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. Oliverira discusses the importance of having a trusted communicator and understanding the audience's belief systems, the population's perception of the communicator, the contradiction between individual rationality and global rationality, and much more. Without this understanding, Oliverira notes that the communicator will lose their audience and explains how to avoid this.

Let’s Talk Risk Podcast is happy to welcome back Ben Trump, a research social scientist at the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center to talk about vaccine and booster shot rollout. Ben discusses the everchanging COVID climate including the vaccine for kids from ages 5-eleven, where the pandemic may be headed next, closing the equity gap, improving communication, and everything in between. Disclaimer: Opinions are the speakers' alone, and not representative of the US Government or any state government.

Dr. Seth Guikema discusses complex risk modeling for the University of Michigan’s COVID-19 reopening plan. Seth is a professor in the Department of Industrial Operations Engineering and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan as well as a past SRA president. Seth explains his university's process in developing the reopening plan and the challenges along the way and how this same modeling process can also be used for elementary schools and other institutions. 

What does vaccination development look like from a risk-based perspective? Seth Guikema, Ph.D., University of Michigan, talks with Ben Trump, a member of the Army Corps of Engineers, about the complex process of COVID-19 vaccine development. Between accounting for technical science perspectives, considering various forms of regulatory approval, and addressing risk assessment-based challenges, parsing through the process for COVID-19 emergency use vaccination efforts can seem arduous. Disclaimer: Opinions are the speakers' alone, and not representative of the US Government or any state government.

What happens when the power grid fails and resilience is lacking? Seth Guikema, Ph.D., University of Michigan and Mark H. Weir, Ph.D., The Ohio State University, have a timely conversation about the Texas Energy Crisis with Roshi Nateghi, Ph.D., who teaches industrial engineering at Purdue University and particularly focuses on infrastructure sustainability and resilience. They discuss the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC) oversight on the bulk power system and what happens when their resilience falls under the jurisdiction of states when it comes to distribution systems. Simple assignment of blame is incorrect and counterproductive, and through risk sciences, can be avoided.

Robyn Wilson, Ph.D., Ohio State University, and Gina Eosco, Ph.D., NOAA, discuss compound hazards and how that impacts the decision making process for individuals and communities when threatened by both extreme weather events and COVID-19. What actions should people take when faced with both evacuation and stay-at-home orders?

Four panelists discuss the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on their research projects in various disciplines of risk analysis.  Panelists: Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, Ph.D., Stanford University Khara Grieger, Ph.D., North Carolina State University Mark Borsuk, Ph.D., Duke University Roshanak Nateghi, Ph.D., Purdue University

Rae Zimmerman, Ph.D., research professor at NYU Wagner, discusses the new challenges for risk analysts posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, from a NYC perspective. 

Sally Wyatt, Ph.D., Maastricht University, and Marie-Valentine Florin, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), discuss direct-to-consumer genetic testing and human genome editing with an overarching theme of risk vs. reward. This episode is hosted by Catherine Wong, University of Luxembourg. 

Sarah Vos, PhD, a research analyst at the University of Kentucky, and Jeannette Sutton, PhD, an associate professor at the University of Kentucky, discuss risk communication on social media and the factors that increase the likelihood of a message being shared and re-tweeted.