Risk InSight

What happens when cutting-edge biotechnology meets artificial intelligence, and who's responsible for governing it? Kate Sixt, Executive Director of the Office of the Chief Scientist at the USDA and former Principal Director for Biotechnology at the Department of Defense, breaks down why biological data is uniquely personal, why governance frameworks need to balance promotion with protection, and...

Every time you turn on the tap, you're trusting a complex system to keep you safe — but what happens when that system faces threats we're still learning to understand? In this episode of Let's Talk Risk , host Anya Grondalski speaks with three researchers on the front lines of drinking water safety. In this episode of Let's Talk Risk, Dr. Alexis Morass of The College of New Jersey breaks down Legi...

"Forever chemicals" have been in headlines for years, but are people actually getting the information they need to protect themselves? In this episode, we sit down with Lyn van Swol, professor in the Department of Communication Arts at UW-Madison, and graduate researcher Rachel Hutchins, co-authors of a newly published study in the journal Risk Analysis . They analyzed the top 98 websites American...

When we think about communicating risk, we often focus on the evidence: the data, the models, the science. But what if the words we choose to frame that risk are just as important as the risk itself?   In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Wändi Bruine de Bruin, a leading researcher in risk perception and behavioral science at the University of Southern California's Schaeffer Institute for Public...

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Zachary Collier, assistant professor at Radford University and longtime member of the Society for Risk Analysis, to explore a hidden but increasingly urgent problem in global supply chains: intellectual property theft through overproduction. Drawing on his research in semiconductor supply chains, Dr. Collier explains how designers and manufacturers navigate tr...

When disaster strikes, how do we rebuild...and do we do it differently? The answer might start with something simpler than we think: listening to the people already living with risk. In this episode, we chat with Ben Raschnock, Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at North Carolina State University, whose work sits at the intersection of civil engineering, operations research,...

Two veteran risk analysts reflect on how scientists, academics, and federal employees (both former and current) are planning for the day agencies can be rebuilt. Adam Finkel, professor at the University of Michigan's School of Public Health and former head of regulation at OSHA, and Vicki Bier, retired faculty from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Com...

Biotechnology is advancing faster than ever before, and the stakes have never been higher. In this episode, Dr. Christopher Cummings, lead for the Center for Health Engineering with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, breaks down why the convergence of biotech and artificial intelligence is creating both unprecedented opportunities and existential risks. From gene-edited foods that could revolutioni...

In this episode of Let's Talk Risk, we're diving into a conversation with two leaders in global development: Abhilash Panda from the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction—the team responsible for delivering the Sendai Framework worldwide—and Jordan Schwartz, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Inter-American Development Bank, the largest source of multilateral financing for...

Khara Grieger, assistant professor of environmental health and risk assessment at NC State University, joins Dr. Sandra Alday to discuss emerging nanotechnologies and their unique applications. Grieger discusses avenues to managing the risks of nanotech development in biotechnology and genetic engineering, as well as the rise of artificial intelligence.

How do we keep elections secure in a world of evolving technology and human error? In this episode, Dr. Sandra Alday sits down with Dr. Natalie Scala , professor and researcher at Towson University, to explore the complex interplay between people and machines in American voting systems. From the shift to vote-by-mail and the risks posed by flash drives, to the critical role of poll workers and the...

Dr. Dominic Balog-Way and Dr. Katherine McComas of Cornell University join Sandra Alday for a compelling episode on their paper titled "Unpacking the Risk of Misinformation: A Communication-Based Critique " published in Risk Analysis . The risk researchers, who first connected at the 2011 SRA Conference and are now close coworkers, have examined the ways people try to place agency and intent on me...

In this latest episode, Dr. Sandra Alday is joined by two guests from the University of Melbourne: Dr. Anna Kosovac and Dr. Olivia Meehan. Together, they've created a course that addresses the subjectivity of risk and how people make decisions based on their comfort level with uncertainty. Incorporating the humanities into the risk classroom helps us move away from the limitations of rationality. 

Dr. Sandra Alday is joined by Manomita Das of the Joint Centre for Disaster Research at Massey University. Together, they discuss what motivates people's behaviors before and after a disaster strikes. How do small acts of kindness impact the disaster landscape? Who is responsible for taking care of risks? And are we better off taking action as individuals or as communities? Learn more in this late...

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 unde...

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...

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...

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 hel...

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 perspec...

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 v...

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 mo...