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Advisory Board

Professor Karlene H. Roberts

Karlene H. Roberts, Ph.D. is Professor in the Graduate School, Haas Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations Group, University of California Berkeley. She is also Research Psychologist, Institute of Industrial Relations and Director, Collaborative for Catastrophic Risk Management — both at University of California Berkeley.
 
Karlene focuses on the design and management of organizations and systems of organizations in which errors can have catastrophic consequences. The results of her research have been applied to U.S. Navy aircraft carrier operations, the U.S. Coast Guard, The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), The Federal Aviation’s Air Traffic Control System, Gard Services, British Petroleum, NASA, and the medical industry.
 
She authored New Challenges to Understanding Organizations and Developing an Interdisciplinary Science of Organizations (Jossey-Bass Social and Behavioral Science Series), coauthored Organizational Behavior (Kent Series in Management), and coedited Handbook of Organizational Communication: An Interdisciplinary Perspective.
 
Her papers include Risk Mitigation in Virtual Organizations, The Incident Command System: High-Reliability Organizing for Complex and Volatile Task Environments, Must Accidents Happen? Lessons from High-Reliability Organizations, Reduction of Tanker Oil and Chemical Spills: Development of Accident and Near-Miss Databases, Mitigating Hazards Through Continuing Design: The Birth and Evolution of a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, Investigation of the Performance of the New Orleans Flood Protection System in Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005, When systems fail, and Learning How Organizations Mitigate Risk.
 
Karlene is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, the Academy of Management, and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. She was awarded a Docteur Honoris Causa by the Universite Paul Cezanne – Aix, Marseilles III.
 
Karlene earned her BA in Psychology at Stanford University and her Ph.D. in Psychology at University California Berkeley.
 
Read UC Berkeley expert and Association of Space Explorers discuss global strategy to defend against incoming asteroids.