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.

Awards

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

Area(s) of Expertise

- Social science
- Risk communication
- Public engagement
- Health communication

Publications

• Public perceptions and support for microbiome engineering to combat mold growth in disaster relief efforts , Environment Systems & Decisions (2026)
• Beyond the Hype: Stakeholder Perceptions of Nanotechnology and Genetic Engineering for Sustainable Food Production , Sustainability (2025)
• Public perceptions and support for introduced microbes to combat hospital-acquired infections and antimicrobial resistance , PLoS ONE (2025)
• Modeling prevention behaviors during the COVID‐19 pandemic using Bayesian belief networks and protection motivation theory , Risk Analysis (2024)
• Equitable Response in Crisis: Methodology and Application for COVID-19 , ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems Part B Mechanical Engineering (2023)
• Exposure to climate change information predicts public support for solar geoengineering in Singapore and the United States , Scientific Reports (2023)
• Gene‐Edited Food Adoption Intentions and Institutional Trust in the United States: Benefits, Acceptance, and Labeling^☆ , Rural Sociology (2023)
• Governing biotechnology to provide safety and security and address ethical, legal, and social implications , Frontiers in Genetics (2023)
• Identifying sustainability assessment parameters for genetically engineered agrifoods , Plants People Planet (2023)
• Peptide ligands for the affinity purification of adeno‐associated viruses from HEK 293 cell lysates , Biotechnology and Bioengineering (2023)