Researcher

Robin L. Dillon-Merrill is a Professor and Area Coordinator for the Operations and Information Management Group in the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. She is also the co-chair of the Georgetown Environment Initiative. In her research, Professor Dillon-Merrill seeks to understand and explain how and why people make the decisions that they do under conditions of uncertainty and risk. This research specifically examines critical decisions that people have made following near-miss events in situations with severe outcomes including hurricane evacuation, terrorism, cyber security, and NASA mission management. She has received research funding from the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Homeland Security through USC’s National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis for Terrorism Events. She has served as a risk analysis and project management expert on several National Academies Committees including the review of the New Orleans regional hurricane protection projects and the application of risk analysis techniques to securing the Department of Energy’s special nuclear materials. She has a B.S./M.S. from the University of Virginia in Systems Engineering and a Ph.D. from Stanford University. From 1993-1995 she worked as a systems engineer for the Fluor Daniel Corporation.