Baruch Fischhoff

Howard Heinz University Professor, Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy & Technology

Bio

Baruch Fischhoff is Howard Heinz University Professor, Department of Engineering and Public Policy and Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy and Technology, Carnegie Mellon University. A graduate of the Detroit Public Schools, he holds a BS (mathematics, psychology) from Wayne State University and a PhD (psychology) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman, advisors). He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine. He is past President of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making and the Society for Risk Analysis. He chaired FDA’s Risk Communication Advisory Committee and has been a member of the Eugene (Oregon) Commission on the Rights of Women, Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Advisory Committee, and EPA Scientific Advisory Board, where he chaired the Homeland Security Advisory Committee. He has received Carnegie Mellon’s Ryan Award for Meritorious Teaching and College of Engineering Outstanding Mentoring Award, the American Psychological Association (APA) Award for Distinguished Contribution to Psychology, Doctorate of Humanities honoris causa from Lund University, Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, and Sigma Xi William Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement. He is a Fellow of APA, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Association for Psychological Science, Society of Experimental Psychologists, and Society for Risk Analysis. His books include Acceptable Risk (1981, Cambridge), Risk: A Very Short Introduction (2011, Oxford), Bounded Disciplines and Unbounded Problems (2025, Oxford), and Decisions (MIT).  

CMIST Course Offerings

• 84-369/84-669 Decision Science for International Relations

Publications

Books

Fischhoff, B. (2025a). Bounded disciplines and unbounded problems (The Clarendon Lectures in Management). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fischhoff, B. (2025, October 14). Decisions: Studying and Supporting People Making Hard Choices. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262553162/decisions

Fischhoff, B., & Kadvany, J. (2011). Risk: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://academic.oup.com/book/454

Articles

Fischhoff, B. (2013). The sciences of science communication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110 (Supplement 3), 14033-14039. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1213273110.

Fischhoff, B., & Davis, A.L. (2014). Communicating scientific uncertainty. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111 (Supplement 4), 13664-13671. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.131750411

Bruine de Bruin, A., & Fischhoff, B. (2017). Eliciting probabilistic expectations: Collaborations between psychologists and economists. PNAS, 114(13), 3297-3304. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1615461114

Mohan, D., Farris, C., Fischhoff, B., Rosengart, M.R., Angus, D., Yealy, D., Wallace, D., & Barnato, A. (2017). Efficacy of video game versus traditional educational apps at improving physician decision making in trauma triage: randomized controlled trial. BMJ, 359, j5416. https://www.bmj.com/content/359/bmj.j5416

Fischhoff, B. (2020). Making decisions in a COVID-19 world. JAMA, 324(2), 139-140. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2020.10178

Fischhoff, B., & Broomell, S.B. (2020). Judgment and decision making. Annual Review of Psychology, 71. 331-355. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010419-050747

Fischhoff, B. (2021). Making behavioral science integral to climate science and action. Behavioural Public Policy, 5(4) 439-453. https://www.doi.org/10.1017/bpp.2020.38

Fischhoff, B., Dewitt, B., Sahlin, N-E., & Davis, A.L. (2021). A secure procedure for early career scientists to report apparent misconduct. Life Sciences, Society and Policy, 17(2). doi: 10.1186/s40504-020-00110-6 [https://rdcu.be/cd838]