Bio

Benjamin D. Trump, PhD, is an Associate Professor with tenure in NC State University’s School of Public and International Affairs and Department of Applied Ecology and a member of the Genetic Engineering and Society (GES) Cluster through the Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program. His work centers on a recurring problem in technology governance: how governments, organizations, and societies make consequential decisions when technologies are moving quickly, evidence is incomplete, and the rules for managing risk are still being written. His research spans synthetic and engineered biology, AI-biotechnology convergence, biosecurity and dual-use technology, risk governance, systemic risk, and complex system resilience.

Before joining NC State in 2026, Trump spent six years as a research scientist with the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, ultimately serving as a Senior Research Social Scientist and leading its Center for Health Engineering. That work put him unusually close to the practical side of risk governance. He led and supported research on biotechnology modernization, engineered biological systems, emerging technological risk, infrastructure resilience, artificial intelligence, environmental security, and public health. During the COVID-19 emergency, he also served on detail to FEMA as a strategic planner for 735 continuous days of service, and later served as a U.S. Embassy Science Fellow in Turkmenistan working on water and environmental security.

His research has repeatedly crossed the boundary between scientific analysis and public decision-making. Trump led a Department of Defense program on biotechnology risk governance and modernization, developed governance frameworks for engineered biological applications intended for environmental release, and contributed to work on emerging risks at the intersection of cyber systems, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology. He has also organized international NATO SPS workshops on synthetic biology and AI-biotech convergence in Europe, the United States, and South America. In a different application of the same systems approach, he leads a long-term program developing quantitative stress-testing methods for critical infrastructure.

Across these areas, Trump uses risk analysis, decision science, systems analysis, risk governance, safe-by-design approaches, and resilience analysis to examine what happens when technological capability outruns established governance practice. His work has addressed questions ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies and governance of AI-enabled biotechnology to pandemic preparedness, infrastructure failure, cybersecurity, environmental security, and the management of cascading and systemic risks.

Trump is the author or co-author of more than 120 journal publications and three books, and has co-edited volumes on biotechnology, resilience, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and emerging technological risk. His books include The Science and Practice of Resilience, Expertise Under Scrutiny: 21st Century Decision Making for Environmental Health and Safety, and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis: Case Studies in Engineering and the Environment. His research has appeared across journals including Nature, Nature Physics, Nature Communications, EMBO Reports, Risk Analysis, Nano Today, Regulation & Governance, and Health Policy, among others.

His honors include the 2025 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the Society for Risk Analysis’ Chauncey Starr Distinguished Young Risk Analyst Award and Richard J. Burke Outstanding Service Award, the IEEE Technical Committee on Homeland Security Young Researcher Award, and multiple U.S. Army and USACE awards for research, innovation, humanitarian service, and technology transfer.

Trump currently serves as President of the Society for Risk Analysis. He previously served as its Treasurer and has held leadership positions in the Society’s Resilience Analysis and Decision Analysis and Risk specialty groups.

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Featured Publications:

• The time window before biological AI spreads. EMBO Reports (2026).
• Governing the AI-biotech convergence. EMBO Reports (2026).
• The convergence of AI and synthetic biology: the looming deluge. npj Biomedical Innovations (2025).
• How Will AI Shape the Future of Pandemic Response? Early Clues From Data Analytics. Risk Analysis (2025).
• Supreme Court ruling alters risk landscape. Nature (2024).
• Systemic resilience in economics. Nature Physics (2022).
• Resilience-by-Design and Resilience-by-Intervention in supply chains for remote and indigenous communities. Nature Communications (2022).
• Building resilience will require compromise on efficiency. Nature Energy (2021).
• Biosecurity Demands Resilience. Environmental Science & Technology (2020).
• Safety-by-design as a governance problem. Nano Today (2020).
• A decision analytic model to guide early-stage government regulatory action: Applications for synthetic biology. Regulation & Governance (2018).
• Integrate life-cycle assessment and risk analysis results, not methods. Nature Nanotechnology (2017).

Area(s) of Expertise

- Risk governance
- Synthetic and engineered biology governance
- AI-biotechnology convergence
- Biosecurity and dual-use technology
- Responsible innovation and safe-by-design
- Systemic risk, resilience, and critical infrastructure
- Decision-making under uncertainty,

Publications

• Operationalizing human factors in critical infrastructure resilience stress testing: a research agenda , Environment Systems & Decisions (2026)
• The time window before biological AI spreads , EMBO Reports (2026)