Krishnan and Fischhoff named 2021 AAAS Fellows
William W. and Ruth F. Cooper Professor of Management Science and Information Systems Ramayya Krishnan and Howard Heinz University Professor Baruch Fischhoff were named 2021 fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). This lifetime distinction includes 564 scientists, engineers and innovators in 24 scientific disciplines.
AAAS Fellows are a distinguished cadre of scientists, engineers and innovators who have been recognized for their achievements across disciplines, from research, teaching, and technology, to administration in academia, industry and government, to excellence in communicating and interpreting science to the public.
Krishnan, who has also served as the dean of the Heinz College since 2008, centers his interest on the role of information and decision analytic systems in organizations and society. He founded the Masters of Information Systems and Management program at Heinz College in 1998. His research has focused on the development and deployment of decision support tools that analyze, interpret and act on consumer and social behavior in digital and networked platforms. More recently, he has focused on developing data driven approaches to help workers acquire the skills required in an evolving labor market. He is the faculty director of CMU's Block Center for Technology and Society. Krishnan has extensive public policy credentials. In 2020, he led a CMU team of faculty experts helping Gov. Tom Wolf and the commonwealth of Pennsylvania to use data science and modeling to inform the state's public health and economic decisions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Krishnan served on the GeoTech Commission at the Atlantic Council, and is a member of the policy advisory board of the U.S. Government Accountability Office. He serves on a select advisory board on technology and economic development to the president of Asian Development Bank. Krishnan is a former president of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) and an INFORMS Fellow, and was selected as a fellow by the National Academy of Public Administration.
Fischhoff's research examines the judgments of experts and laypeople related to personal and public policy decisions involving health, safety and the environment. He has worked on topics as diverse as climate change, intelligence analysis, pandemic disease (including COVID-19), nuclear power, personal safety, trauma triage, breast cancer, pharmaceutical regulation and sexually transmitted infections. Fischhoff is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine, as well as former president of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making and the Society for Risk Analysis. He has chaired committees of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Academy of Sciences. He is also a fellow of American Psychological Association (APA), Association for Psychological Science, Society of Experimental Psychologists and Society for Risk Analysis. He has received the APA Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology, Carnegie Mellon's William H. and Frances S. Ryan Award for Meritorious Teaching, a doctorate of humanities honoris causa from Lund University, an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, and the Sigma Xi William Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement.
