Yanran Yang

Yanran Yang obtained her PhD in the Engineering and Public Policy program at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research interests are in risk communication, risk perception, and decision-making and behavior as related to energy and environmental change. She has recently expanded her interests to include decision-making in health care domain with her CMU advisor, Baruch Fischhoff.

Yanran has always been interested in communication. Indeed, she holds a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and Journalism. However, it wasn’t until the Fukushima nuclear disaster happened during her studies at Tsinghua University that she became interested in environmental issues. In the aftermath of the disaster, she began noticing the problematic decisions people were making regarding potential radiation exposure. For instance, she saw many individuals buying copious amounts of salt from the supermarkets because they heard from their peers that it would protect them from the radiation. Through studying in multi-disciplines and collaborating with researchers from diverse fields also interested in risk communications and behaviors, Yanran gradually discovered that behavioral decision research could be an exciting way to learn more about the subject:

“In a lab, you may suspect people may behave a certain way under certain circumstances. As a decision scientist, you get real data from real people to find gaps between theory and reality.”

When not researching, Yanran likes to watch food and history documentaries, read her favorite author Virginia Woolf, and find things in her favorite color –green!