Bio

Christopher L. Cummings, PhD, serves as a Senior Research Fellow at North Carolina State University and is the Founding Director of Decision Analytica, LLC. He currently is serving on a COVID-19 task force with the United States Army Corp of Engineers where he is evaluating and developing public health and risk models for use across various locations to allocate government resources to areas of imminent need. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor of Strategic Communication at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore—a top-ranked university in Asia and among the top 15 in the world where he also served as the Director of the International Strategic Communication Management program.

Dr. Cummings’ work focuses on advancing public engagement with science, developing risk communication theory, and improving public health decision making across the life span. An experienced social scientist and communication campaign scholar, Dr. Cummings uses a variety of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods, and his work has been featured in more than 40 applied science and health venues, including the Journal of Risk Research; Regulation and Governance; Nanotoxicology; PLOS One; Science, Technology, & Human Values; and Climate Research, among others. Outside of academia, Dr. Cummings also consults with multiple government agencies across the Asia-Pacific on health risk communication issues, including dengue fever surveillance and response (Sri Lanka and Singapore), obesity and nutrition access (New Zealand), vaccine communication (Singapore, Australia, and United States), and public engagement with nanotechnology, synthetic biology, and geoengineering (Australia, United States, and Singapore). He also consults privately with various Fortune 500 companies on leadership training, strategic planning, and risk communication initiatives.

Education

PhD, North Carolina State University; MS, North Carolina State University; BA, California State University, Chico

Expertise

Social science, Risk communication, Public engagement, Health communication

Featured In

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• TEDx NTU
• The Change Agent
• Influence: What has COVID-19 taught us about risk communication? MONEYFM radio

Awards

• 2019: Distinguished Alumni Award; Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media PhD Program, North Carolina State University
• 2017: Nanyang Education Award; Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Highlighted Publications

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A typology of beliefs and misperceptions about the influenza disease and vaccine among older adults in Singapore

Pandemics Call for Systems Approaches to Research and Funding

Synthetic Biology 2020: Frontiers in Risk Analysis and Governance