Contact: Maridith Geuder
A Harvard University researcher in the field of risk analysis, particularly as it relates to children, speaks Tuesday [March 30] at Mississippi State University.
The 3:30 p.m. public program led by Kimberly Thompson will take place in Room 1 of Swalm Chemical Engineering Building. Thompson, a faculty member in Harvard's School of Public Health, is visiting MSU as a guest of the campus chapter of Sigma Xi international scientific research society.
Her topic is "Science in the Age of Risk Management," an area in which she has written and spoken widely. She is the author of "Humor in the Age of Risk Management" (2003) and "Overkill: How Our Nation's Abuse of Antibiotics and Other Germ Killers is Hurting Your Health and What You Can Do About It" (2002).
Director of the public health school's Kids Risk Project, Thompson has gained an international reputation for her work in the area of children's risks and probabilistic risk analysis. She has been a tireless proponent of the need for better information to improve decisions made by kids, parents and government policy-makers, among others.
More broadly, her research focuses on issues related to developing and applying quantitative methods for risk assessment, risk management and considering public policy implications of the variability and uncertainty in risk characterization.
In addition to her work at Harvard, Thompson is co-founder and research director for the Center for Media and Child Health at the Boston Children's Hospital. Through that center, she performs research on messages in popular media such as motion pictures and video games.
She holds bachelor's and master's degrees in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a doctorate in environmental health from Harvard.
For more on the MSU program, telephone Todd French at (662) 325-4308.