CREATE Director Professor Detlof von Winterfeldt has been appointed as the inaugural holder of the J.A. Tiberti Chair in Ethics and Decision Making, a recently established Viterbi School endowment. This appointment recognizes Professor Winterfeldt’s exceptional distinction as a faculty member in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the Price School of Public Policy.
Professor Winterfeldt is Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and Public Policy and Management. He received his Ph.D. degree in mathematical psychology from the University of Michigan. He joined USC in 1973, first as a Research Assistant and later as a Research Associate at the Social Science Research Institute, then as an Associate and Full Professor in several USC Departments. From 2001 to 2005 he was an Associate and Deputy Dean of the Price School. In 2004 he co-founded the National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE), the first University based center of excellence funded by the US Department of Homeland Security. He served as CREATE’s director from 2004 to 2008 and was reappointed to this position in 2015. In the interim, he was on leave of absence as Director of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), a global think tank located near Vienna, Austria (2009-2012) and as Centennial Professor of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE, 2008-2012).
Professor von Winterfeldt has taught courses in statistics, decision analysis, risk analysis, systems analysis, research design, and behavioral decision research. His research interests are in the foundation and practice of decision and risk analysis applied to technology development, environmental risks, natural hazards and terrorism. As a principal investigator at USC he was awarded more than $40 million in contract and grants. He is the co-author of two books, three edited volumes, and author or co-author of over 120 refereed articles and chapters. He has served on over a dozen committees and panels of the U.S. National Academies and the U.S. National Science Foundation, including an appointment to the National Academies’ Board on Mathematical Sciences and their Applications. He is an elected Fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) and of the Society for Risk Analysis. In 2000 he received the Ramsey Medal for distinguished contributions to decision analysis from the Decision Analysis Society of INFORMS. In 2009 he received the Gold Medal from the International Society for Multicriteria Decision Making for advancing the field and in 2012 he received the distinguished achievement award by the Society for Risk Analysis.