CREATE congratulates Detlof von Winterfeldt on his retirement from the University of Southern California. We thank him for his many years of leadership of CREATE, the nation’s first university Center of Excellence in Research and Education funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, as well as for his continuing inspiration regarding risk, decision, and behavioral analysis of threats and emergencies to the nation.
Detlof von Winterfeldt was co-PI with Randolph Hall for the proposal to DHS that prevailed in a competition with over 70 U.S. universities in 2004. The Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) established a collaboration between the Viterbi School of Engineering and USC School of Public Policy. As Director of CREATE for two terms, Detlof was successful in building a superb center of dedicated researchers and support staff, including faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduates. One of his guiding principles for CREATE was that all research would be peer-reviewed and published in top academic journals. His own research influenced how DHS responded to a number of threats following 9/11, including portable surface-to-air missiles, dirty bombs, and border vulnerability. Many of CREATE’s faculty and students continue to contribute to America’s homeland security. As CREATE’s scope was broadened to include risk and economic analysis for other disasters, CREATE’s name changed to the Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Threats and Emergencies. More recently, Detlof headed a research team that developed a methodology for aiding the DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) in evaluating the benefits, costs, and risks of R&D for the homeland security enterprise.
Professor von Winterfeldt will be succeeded as CREATE Director by Professor Adam Rose, Research Professor of Public Policy and Engineering, and CREATE Senior Research Fellow and Director Emeritus, who served in the position between 2019 and 2021. Professor Rose remarked: “All of us at CREATE are grateful for Detlof’s outstanding leadership and inspiring research, as well as setting a high bar for quality in both. The opportunity to work with Detlof and others at CREATE was the major reason I came to USC 20 years ago, and I have benefitted greatly from my collaborations with him and many other CREATE researchers at USC, as well as affiliates at other institutions, he attracted to the Center.”
Professor von Winterfeldt retired on December 31, 2025, after more than 50 years of service at USC. He was the co-founder and director of CREATE (from 2004 to 2008 and from 2015 to 2019). He developed CREATE’s research framework, combining risk, behavioral, decision, and economic analysis into an integrated, multidisciplinary agenda aimed at improving decision making at DHS. CREATE reflected his research interests in several critical fields. Over the 20 years of his involvement with CREATE, he obtained more than $30 million in research funding as principal investigator. In addition to leading CREATE, he was also a Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering and a Professor of Public Policy at USC, inaugural J. A. Tiberti Chair in Ethics and Decision Making (2016 to 2025), Director of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna, Austria (2009 to 2012), and Centennial Professor of the London School of Economics (2008 to 2012). His widely cited book (co-authored with Ward Edwards), Decision Analysis and Behavioral Research, demonstrated the importance of behavioral research for decision and risk analysis as well as for other fields. He received many awards, including the Ramsey Medal for distinguished contributions to decision analysis by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, the Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievements by the International Society for Multi-Criteria Decision Making, and the Distinguished Achievement Award by the Society for Risk Analysis.
Posted April 8, 2026