Dr. Benjamin D. Trump is Chief Executive Officer of Dara Systems, LLC, and an Associate Professor with tenure in the School of Public and International Affairs and the Department of Applied Ecology at North Carolina State University, where he is a member of the Genetic Engineering and Society Cluster. He also holds an adjunct appointment at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and is President of the Society for Risk Analysis. His work examines how governments, organizations, and societies make consequential decisions under deep uncertainty, with particular emphasis on systemic risk, critical infrastructure, emerging and dual-use technologies, AI-biotechnology convergence, biosecurity, and resilience analysis.
Before joining NC State in 2026, Dr. Trump spent six years at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, where he served as a Senior Research Social Scientist and founded the Center for Health Engineering. During the COVID-19 emergency, he served for 735 consecutive days in service to FEMA Region I as a strategic planner. Likewise, he was the senior leader of a scientific team that earned USACE-ERDC an Army Superior Unit Award from the Secretary of the Army in January 2025, the first Army unit award in the history of ERDC.
He was twice selected as the US Embassy Science Fellow to Turkmenistan (serving once in Ashgabat and Dashoguz), pioneering critical engagements with multilateral water security and data analytics across the Amu Darya watershed, and was lauded for his engagements in additional nations of Iraq, Jordan, and Libya. He has also completed international fellowships at the University of Lisbon as well as the Institute of Occupational Medicine in Singapore, and organized international workshops through NATO’s Science for Peace and Security Programme across Europe and South America, a NATO SPS Multiyear Project with colleagues throughout Ukraine, Poland, and Türkiye (emphasizing resilience of Ukrainian civil infrastructure), and for SRA’s World Congresses in South Africa and Singapore. His work was highlighted with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), specifying methodological capabilities to quantify and stress test critical infrastructure resilience for developing nations experiencing environmental, climatological, socioeconomic, and other disasters.
Dr. Trump has authored or coauthored more than 120 journal publications and 3 prior monographs. He has also co-edited 9 volumes on resilience, biotechnology, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and emerging-technology governance. His honors include the 2025 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE, conferred by President Biden); the Society for Risk Analysis Chauncey Starr Distinguished Young Risk Analyst Award and Richard J. Burk Outstanding Service Award; the IEEE Technical Committee on Homeland Security Young Researcher Award; and multiple U.S. Army and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awards such as the Civilian Award for Humanitarian Service and the Department of the Army Superior Civilian Service Award, and the Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative (ELBI). He earned his PhD in Health Management and Policy from the University of Michigan and his MS in Public Policy and Management and BS in Political Science from Carnegie Mellon University.
Dr. Igor Linkov is a Senior Scientific and Technical Manager at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center and an Adjunct Professor at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Florida. He also holds international fellowships with the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change and the Balsillie School of International Affairs at the University of Waterloo and is the founding President of the International Association for Resilience Analysis. Over a career spanning more than three decades, his research has developed science of risk and resilience in complex interconnected systems and applied them to critical infrastructure, transportation, energy, cyber systems, supply chains, public health, environmental management, and command-and-control systems. He is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society for Risk Analysis.
Before joining ERDC in 2007, Dr. Linkov spent ten years in environmental consulting, including senior risk-assessment and team-leadership roles at ICF International and Arthur D. Little. He advised government and industry on complex environmental and public-health decisions and served as lead risk assessor on major projects, including the Hudson River Superfund site. At ERDC, he built a multidisciplinary research program addressing the risk and resilience of complex systems, represented the U.S. Army in the National Nanotechnology Initiative and the federal Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Program. He served on detail with the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA, reporting directly to senior FEMA and Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response leadership while helping coordinate the federal COVID-19 response.
Dr. Linkov has contributed to White House and federal interagency initiatives supporting national resilience and critical-infrastructure policy. He served as a U.S. Science Fellow at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin and the U.S. Mission to the OECD, has advised the European Commission, the National Academies, and other scientific and policy organizations, and currently serves as the U.S. representative to the NATO Supply Chain Working Group. Since 1997, he has organized over 30 NATO and other International conferences and workshops addressing risk analysis, infrastructure security, cyber resilience, climate adaptation, and emerging technologies. His professional leadership also includes founding three specialty groups within the Society for Risk Analysis (Security and Defense, Decision Analysis and Resilience) and serving as Editor-in-Chief of the journal
in 2012-2025 and the Springer book series
since 2014.
Dr. Linkov has authored or edited nearly thirty books, and published more than 500 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters in journals including
,
, and
. He has mentored more than 200 students and early-career professionals across government, academia, and industry, with his contributions to education and mentorship recognized by the Society for Risk Analysis Outstanding Educator Award and the Department of Defense Mentor of the Year Award. His honors also include the Army's Distinguished Civilian Service Medal, its highest civilian award; the Arthur S. Flemming Award for Exceptional Public Service; the Department of Defense Top Laboratory Scientist Award; the International Society for Integrated Disaster Risk Management Distinguished Research Award; the IEEE Homeland Security Research and Innovation Award; and the Edgeworth-Pareto Award from the International Society on Multiple Criteria Decision Making. He earned his PhD in Environmental, Occupational, and Radiation Health from the University of Pittsburgh in 1995, completed postdoctoral training in biostatistics and toxicology at Harvard University, and holds an MS in Physics and Mathematics from the Polytechnic Institute.
