Elisabeth Paté-Cornell

Elisabeth Paté-Cornell

Elisabeth Paté-Cornell is the Burt and Deedee McMurtry Professor in the School of Engineering and professor and founding chair (2000-2011) of the department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. Her primary areas of teaching, research, consulting and public service are engineering risk analysis, risk management and decision analysis, with extension to a spectrum of security problems. Her past research has focused on the extension of probabilistic risk analysis models to include human and organizational factors, with applications, for example, to the maintenance of the tiles of the space shuttle, the management of offshore oil platforms, and anesthesia in operating rooms. Her more recent research has focused on counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency as well as the risk posed by asteroids. Her current focus is on cyber-security and cyber risk analysis, including: the optimal connectivity of a smart grid; the analysis of attack data gathered by organizations and the benefits of counter-measures; and the optimal frequency of replacement or patching of software in an infrastructure organization that adversaries may try to penetrate.

She is a member of National Academy of Engineering, or the French Académie des Technologies, and a past president and fellow of the Society for Risk Analysis. She is a former member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (2001-2008) and of the California Council on Science and Technology. She is currently a member of the Board of Advisors of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey and of the Board of Trustees of InQtel. She has been a member of the Board of Trustees of Draper Laboratory, of the Aerospace Corporation, of the NASA Advisory Council, and of the JPL Advisory Council,

Her undergraduate degree was in mathematics and physics. She received her graduate Engineer Degree in Applied Mathematics/Computer Science in 1971 from the Institut Polytechnique of Grenoble, France, a Master’s degree in Operations Research in 1972, and a Ph.D. in Engineering-Economic Systems in 1978, both from Stanford University. She taught at MIT in the department of Civil Engineering (1978-1981) and at Stanford in the department of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management (1981-1999) which she chaired from 1997 to 1999. She was the first chair (2000-2011) of the department of Management Science and Engineering resulting from the fusion in January 2000 of the former departments of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, and of Engineering-Economic Systems and Operations Research. She has been a memberof the Stanford Advisory Board (2005-20010) , which she chaired in 2009-2010.