Summit Explores Complex Risk Science
A one-day invitation-only summit event titled “Boston-Area Complex Risk Science: Exploring new Frontiers and a New Community for Understanding Risk,” was held on June 9, 2025, at Northeastern University. Summit sponsors included CEE Distinguished Professor Auroop Ganguly, who leads Northeastern University’s Sustainability and Data Sciences (SDS) Lab, as well as the Institute for Experiential AI, AI for Climate and Sustainability (AI4CaS), and Ryan McGranaghan, research scientist and data scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Attendees included approximately 40 experts from institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory, Dartmouth College, ISO New England, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). The attendees explored the underdeveloped yet crucial field of complex risk science. The primary objective was to pinpoint some of the non-obvious gaps in the current risk assessment models and discuss ways complexity and social sciences may bolster solutions. Discussions focused on how traditional approaches may have limitations around uncertainty, ways this uncertainty could be embraced and integrated, and addressing how deeply intertwined technological, societal, ecological, and economical systems are.
Keynote speakers included Qi “Ryan” Wang, associate professor and vice chair for research for civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern; Lynee Turek-Hankins, postdoctoral fellow at Dartmouth College; and Sai Ravela, principal research scientist, Earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences at the MIT Center for Computational Science and Engineering (EAPS). There was a panel discussion regarding the power grid as a demonstrative system for complex risk and resilience paradigm. The day concluded with a collaborative discussion to develop artifacts and future project ideas.
One of the attendees, PhD candidate and Lizzy Warner Fellow Aayushi Mishra shared her experience from the summit. “I enjoyed how the summit brought together diverse experts and created real space for collaboration. While my research focuses on physical climate risk and U.S. public finance, some of our conversations revealed the insurance sector’s impact on energy is relatively underexplored. We are going to next see where we can collaborate on this to build systemic, long-term solutions with complex risk in mind.”
This summit marked the beginning of an impactful and—ongoing dialogue, with the goal of continuous collaboration and advancement of complex risk and resilience with thoughtful integration of social and ecological sciences.