Research

My Research

My research is interdisciplinary and theory-driven. It examines how people and institutions perceive, communicate, and respond to risk in science- and technology-intensive policy domains. I study how information moves through systems that shape decisions about natural hazards, environmental governance, energy innovation, and national security. Drawing on behavioral science, policy process theory, and communication theory, I analyze how cognition, institutions, and interorganizational relationships influence the flow and use of evidence in decision-making.

Methodologically, my work integrates theory with data-intensive tools to explain and improve how scientific knowledge informs public decisions. Much of this research occurs through long-term collaborations with federal agencies, national laboratories, and academic partners. Together, we design studies and programs that strengthen the connection between science and governance, ensuring that policy processes are evidence-based and socially responsive. My goal is to help public institutions use evidence in ways that advance the public interest.

Themes

Given my commitment to front-line, applied research, my scholarship is diverse and dynamic. It evolves in response to the changing needs of government and the broader policy community. At its core, my work examines how people and organizations understand and respond to risk in policy contexts defined by scientific uncertainty and technological complexity. Much of my research is organized around three interrelated themes:

  1. Perception and Communication of Science and Risk. I study how people understand and respond to risk and uncertainty related to climate, weather, energy, and emerging technologies. Using survey experiments, text analysis, and field research, I examine how framing, visualization, and trust in science shape public understanding and behavior. A long-term national survey program, for example, tracks how the public interprets National Weather Service forecasts, informing national guidance on communicating probabilistic information and evolving warning practices.

  2. Institutional and Organizational Decision Making. I examine how organizational structures, incentives, and interagency collaboration shape the movement of scientific information through policy networks. For example, I lead an NSF project to design a unified national fire warning system and co-lead a DOE initiative to develop socially sustainable approaches to managing complex energy infrastructure, such as spent nuclear fuel storage. Across these efforts, the central challenges are social rather than technical—rooted in governance, coordination, and public trust at the intersection of science, engineering, and policy.

  3. Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy. I study how institutions govern emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and advanced energy systems in ways that balance opportunity and risk. Current projects examine how NOAA and its partners can integrate AI-based weather models into forecasting systems and how public discourse shapes fusion energy innovation and policy. Across these efforts, I focus on building institutional capacity to ensure that scientific and technological progress advances public goals in trusted and responsible ways.

Open-Access Datasets

I firmly believe that publicly funded research should produce publicly accessible knowledge. To that end, I design my projects to generate high-quality, open-access datasets that support transparency, replication, and secondary analysis.

Below are a few examples:

Interactive Platforms

In addition to open-access data, I build interactive platforms such as dashboards that help decision makers visualize and apply research to real-world problems.

A few examples include:

  • WxDash. An interactive platform that provides access to data and visualizations from the Extreme Weather and Society Survey.
  • S³OKDash. A dashboard that visualizes survey data from the Oklahoma Meso-Scale Integrated Socio-Geographic Network (M-SISNet).
  • ProbCom. An interactive platform that synthesizes findings from a systematic literature review on how people interpret and respond to probabilistic information (a core theme in my research).