CREATE Senior Research Fellow and Sol Price School of Public Policy Research Professor Adam Rose has been appointed as Director of the Center through June 30, 2021.
“I’m honored to have been asked to serve as the Director, given the importance of the position and the fine leadership provided by previous directors, most notably Professor Detlof von Winterfeldt, who was a co-founding Director in CREATE’s early years and has served a second term since 2015,” Rose noted. “One of the reasons I came to USC was the existence of CREATE and its important role in research and policy advising in critical areas of terrorism attacks, as well as natural hazards and technological accidents. CREATE has established itself as a leader in the areas of risk and economic analysis, and I would like to continue this tradition.”
Professor Rose received his PhD in Economics from Cornell University and has held appointments at the University of California, Riverside; West Virginia University; and The Pennsylvania State University, where he served as Professor and Head of the Department of Energy and Environmental Economics, as well as Professor of Geography.
He has been affiliated with CREATE since 2005, even before coming to USC the following year. He previously served the Center as Coordinator for Economics between 2006 and 2012.
One of Professor Rose’s priorities is to work with a Strategic Planning and Hiring Committee comprised of faculty from the Price School and the Viterbi School of Engineering, the two schools at USC with which CREATE is affiliated, to recruit a permanent director for CREATE. “We look forward examining future challenges and opportunities for CREATE, and hope to attract an outstanding researcher with high-level administrative experience to carry on the tradition of excellence in the Director’s position long term,” Rose said. Professor Rose has done groundbreaking research on the economic consequences of and resilience to disasters. He spearheaded the development of CREATE’s economic consequence capability, which has been applied to several important case studies, and recently resulted in the development of a rapid estimation decision-support software system known as the Economic Consequence Analysis Tool (E- CAT). Case study applications include: working with several other researchers to arrive at a consensus estimate of the economic consequences of the 9/11 World Trade Center Attacks, the impacts of closing the US borders to a terrorist or health threat, and disruption to major infrastructure systems, such as electricity and water, cyber networks, and seaports.