RICHARDSON, Texas (Sept. 15, 2004) – Risk management as it relates to large-investment industrial projects that involve new technologies, applications and markets will be the focus of a new center being established at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) School of Management.
The director of the center, named The International Center for Decision and Risk Analysis (ICDRiA), is Dr. Alain Bensoussan, a former chairperson of the European Space Agency Council who joined the UTD faculty this summer as a distinguished research professor.
“Risk management is inherent to many situations and has serious implications in decision making,” Bensoussan said, explaining that the center would “act as a multi-disciplinary, public-private, international research organization that provides a forum for exchange of knowledge and experience between industries to discover aspects among them that may be mutually beneficial.”
Bensoussan said ICDRiA was especially interested in projects funded by such industries as telecommunications, automotive and pharmaceutical or by such public sectors as defense, space and energy.
“The center will be conducting comparative studies in methodological and organizational aspects of risk management. As a forum for knowledge exchange, it also will be able to provide a better view of the risks in industrial projects to banks and insurance companies, for which managing risk is the core business,” he said.
Bensoussan’s interest in problems of risk grew out of his experience with the European Space Agency, which he headed from 1999 to 2002, and with the French Space Agency, of which he was president from 1996 to 2003, as well as from his extensive research background. He is professor emeritus at the University of Paris Dauphine and is a member of the French Academy of Sciences, the French Academy of Technology, the Academia Europae and the International Academy of Astronautics. In addition, he is a recipient of the Von Humboldt Award, and he holds a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) public service medal.
Dr. Hasan Pirkul, dean of the UTD School of Management, said ICDRiA’s focus was particularly important in the North Texas region, where technology is such an important sector of the economy. “In technology-intensive industries that rely heavily on innovation, decision-making based on past experience is, by definition, limited, but, at the same time, the creation of new technologies requires large investment. The activities of this new center will be an important asset to industries in our region, and it is most appropriate for UTD to increase its research and education efforts in this field.”
More information on ICDRiA is available at http://som.utdallas.edu/icdria/.
About The UTD School of Management
The School of Management is the largest of UTD’s seven schools, with an enrollment that has increased 92 per cent over the last eight years to more than 4,300 students. The school’s new, 204,000-square-foot building — featuring classrooms with state-of-the-art audio and visual equipment, wireless connectivity, video-conferencing facilities, a computer lab, faculty offices, meeting rooms and an executive education center — opened in August 2003.
About UTD
The University of Texas at Dallas, located at the convergence of Richardson, Plano and Dallas in the heart of the complex of major multinational technology corporations known as the Telecom Corridor®, enrolls more than 14,000 students. The school’s freshman class traditionally stands at the forefront of Texas state universities in terms of average SAT scores. The university offers a broad assortment of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs. For additional information about UTD, please visit the university’s web site at www.utdallas.edu.