College of Business Research Associates

Patricia "Patty" Born, Ph.D.

Dr. Patricia Born joined the Department of Risk Management/Insurance, Real Estate and Business Law at Florida State University in the fall of 2008. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Duke University in 1994. From 1994-1997 she worked in the Center for Health Care Policy and Research at the American Medical Association, and taught in the evening MBA program at DePaul University. In 1997 she joined the Finance faculty at the University of Connecticut, where she taught insurance and health care finance for three years. From 2001-2008 she taught in the Department of Finance, Real Estate, and Insurance at California State University-Northridge (CSUN). In the fall of 2007 she spent her sabbatical from CSUN teaching Risk Management at Shanghai Normal University.

Dr. Born’s research interests include insurer profitability, medical malpractice, managed care finance, tort reform, and catastrophe modeling. Current research projects include a study of how property insurance markets react to catastrophic events, the modeling of earthquake losses in California, an analysis of factors affecting state adoption of medical malpractice reforms, and a study of the relationship between health insurance market concentration and the availability of substitute drugs. She has published research in the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Journal of Risk and Insurance, Journal of Regulatory Economics, Risk Management and Insurance Review, the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, the Journal of Legal Studies, the Brookings Papers on Microeconomic Activity, and Health Affairs. She is currently co-editor of the Journal of Insurance Issues, and serves on the editorial board of Risk Management and Insurance Review.

Dr. Born has served on the RIMS Technology Advisory Council, is a past-president of the Western Risk and Insurance Association, and a member of the board of the Southern Risk and Insurance Association. She currently volunteers as a Long Term Care ombudsman for the State of Florida Department of Elder Affairs.

James M. Carson, Ph.D.

James M. Carson holds the Payne H. and Charlotte Hodges Midyette Eminent Scholar Chair in Risk Management and Insurance in the College of Business at Florida State University. He directs the RMI Doctoral Program and teaches courses in the college’s undergraduate, masters, and doctoral programs. Prior to joining the faculty at FSU, he served as a professor of Risk and Insurance at Illinois State University, where he served as Interim Director of the Katie School of Insurance. He has received several teaching and research awards.

Dr. Carson received undergraduate and masters degrees in finance from the University of Nebraska, and a Ph.D. in Risk and Insurance from the University of Georgia. In 1998 he completed the Lloyd’s of London Executive Education Program through Lincoln College at Oxford University.

His research is focused in the areas of insurer financial strength, regulatory and ethical issues, financial planning, insurance market and product issues, and insurance pricing. His publications have appeared in various scholarly and trade journals including the Journal of Risk and Insurance, the North American Actuarial Journal, the Journal of Multinational Financial Management, the Journal of Insurance Regulation, the Journal of Business Ethics, the Journal of Insurance Issues, the Journal of Financial Service Professionals, the CPCU Journal, and the Journal of Actuarial Practice, and other academic and professional journals. Professor Carson has served as a consultant and/or offered expert testimony in litigation relating to business damages calculations, insurance contract interpretation, and life insurance valuation. He serves as a trustee of the Griffith Insurance Education Foundation.

Dr. Carson is Past President of the American Risk and Insurance Association, the world’s premier academic risk and insurance organization. He also is a Past President of the Western Risk and Insurance Association, a member of the Southern Risk and Insurance Association, and a member of the Financial Management Association. He serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Insurance Regulation and on the editorial boards of the E-CPCU Journal and the Journal of Financial Services Professionals. He holds the professional designations of CLU, CPCU, and ARM.

Dr. Carson has taught a wide range of courses since 1986, including Risk Management and Insurance courses at all levels of instruction while at Florida State University. He has made presentations before various groups including academics, regulators, and industry professionals, with many of these presentations on the topics of insurer financial strength / insurer solvency, insurer operations, insurance products / performance, and the U.S. insurance market.

Cassandra R. Cole, Ph.D.

Dr. Cole is an Associate Professor of Risk Management and Insurance (RMI) and the Waters Fellow in Risk Management and Insurance at Florida State University. She received her undergraduate degree from Howard University and her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia. She has taught courses at both the undergraduate and graduate level and currently serves as the undergraduate advisor for RMI majors. In addition, Dr. Cole has served on a variety of committees with the college and university at large.

Dr. Cole has three primary areas of research: reinsurance, insurance regulation, or retirement adequacy. Within these areas, her publications have appeared in the Journal of Risk and Insurance, Journal of Insurance Issues, Risk Management and Insurance Review, Journal of Insurance Regulation, CPCU eJournal, Journal of Financial Service Professionals, and Best’s Review. Dr. Cole has been awarded instructional grants from Florida State University and State Farm Insurance Companies. In addition, she has received several research grants/awards from Florida State University, the State of Florida, the Department of Labor, and the Journal of Insurance Regulation to investigate a variety of topics including: the impact of enforcement and penalty structures on compliance to compulsory automobile insurance laws; the level of preparedness of Americans for retirement; and possible solutions to the problem of sinkholes within the state of Florida.

Dr. Cole is an active member of the American Risk and Insurance Association (ARIA), Southern Risk and Insurance Association (SRIA), and Western Risk and Insurance Association (WRIA). Within these organizations, she has made numerous academic presentations as well as served as a moderator, a discussant, and as a member on a variety of committees. Finally, she currently serves on the Editorial Board of Journal of Insurance Regulation and the Board of Directors of the Southern Risk and Insurance Association.

Richard B. Corbett, Ph.D.

Richard B. Corbett is the Independent Life and Accident Insurance Company Professor in The College of Business. He is a native of Atlanta, Georgia, where he worked for a life insurance company and then earned the MBA and Ph.D. degrees from Georgia State University. Prof. Corbett has also taught at The University of Texas at Austin, Southern Illinois University - Carbondale, The University of Iowa, and Seattle University. He has earned the Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU), Chartered Property and Casualty Underwriter (CPCU), and Associate in Risk Management (ARM) professional designations.

Dr. Corbett has taught a variety of courses in both the property and liability and life and health insurance areas. He was Director of Master’s Programs in The College of Business at FSU and was the advisor to RMI Ph.D. students for fourteen years. He has taught in a variety of educational venues, including being an invited lecturer at the Instituto Nacional de Seguros in San Jose, Costa Rica. He taught the “Fundamentals of Insurance” course for the Risk and Insurance Management Society, Inc. (RIMS) for twenty-two years. He taught agent education schools for both national agents’ associations, and in 1994 the National Association of Professional Insurance Agents named Prof. Corbett “Insurance Educator of the Year.”

Dr. Corbett has a substantial publication record and has published in the top journals is risk management and insurance. He has presented numerous papers at professional conferences and has spoken to many industry and community groups. His current research interests are in retirement planning and in residual property insurance markets. He has also worked as a consultant and expert witness in the areas of insurance and risk management.

Dr. Corbett currently chairs the Risk Management Advisory Committee for the City of Tallahassee. He is a member of the ARM Advisory Committee for the Insurance Institute of America. He is a Past President of the Southern Risk and Insurance Association. Prof. Corbett twice co-chaired the United Way Campaign at Florida State University. He has been a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity and for Cobb Middle School and a middle school “Brain Bowl” moderator in Tallahassee. In an earlier life, he performed for four years with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

Randy E. Dumm, Ph.D.

Dr. Randy E. Dumm is an Associate Professor or Risk Management and Insurance and he is the People’s First Insurance Fellow. He has published across a wide range of academic journals including The Journal of Risk and Insurance, Risk Management and Insurance Review, Journal of Insurance Regulation, Journal of Financial Services Professions, and the CPCU eJournal.

He currently serves as the Chair of the Florida Hurricane Loss Prevention Methodology Commission and he served as a member of the Task Force on Long-term Solutions for Florida’s Hurricane Insurance Market. He has made presentations related to hurricane loss modeling and catastrophic loss to the Florida House Committee on Insurance and to the Florida Senate Select Committee on Property Insurance.

He also has made presentations on hurricane loss modeling and the Florida insurance marketplace to industry and academic groups including the German Insurance Science Associate, Swiss Re- Germany, and University of Ulm, Germany.

Patrick F. Maroney

Patrick F. Maroney is the Kathryn Magee Kip Professor in the Department of Risk Management/Insurance, Real Estate and Business Law. He has been a faculty member at Florida State University since 1981. He currently serves as the director of the Florida Catastrophic Storm Risk Management Center. Prior to that position he served as the associate dean for Graduate Programs in the College of Business from 2003 until January 2008. He also served as the chairman of the Risk Management and Insurance Department from 1994 until the fall semester of 2001.

Professor Maroney has authored or co-authored more than forty articles and books. Professor Maroney’s research concentration is in the area of insurance law and regulation. Articles have appeared in the Journal of Insurance Regulation, Risk Management and Insurance Review, Florida State University Law Review, Florida Bar Journal, Journal of Insurance Issues, Insurance Counsel Journal, and The American Business Law Journal. He has presented papers at regional and national academic conferences. He has received a Teaching Incentive Program award for excellence in teaching and has been named Student Organization Advisor of the Year.

Professor Maroney was a member of the NCCI Insurance Fraud Commission. He has served as a board member of the Southern Risk and Insurance Association and as president of that organization. He was the executive consultant to the Automobile Insurance Task Force and a co-author of the Insurance Study of Sinkholes.

He has served as continuing education chair of the Administrative Law section of the Florida Bar and been recognized for outstanding service to the section. He has also served as an officer and board member of the section.

Kathleen McCullough, Ph.D.

Kathleen McCullough, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and the State Farm Insurance Companies Professor in Risk Management and Insurance in the Risk Management/Insurance, Real Estate, and Business Law Department at Florida State University. Prior to working at Florida State University, she was an Assistant Professor at Illinois State University in the Katie Insurance School. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia and a BBA from St. Mary’s University.

Her research interests include reinsurance and insurance regulation as well as the implications of earnings management and mergers and acquisitions. Her work has been published in several journals including the Journal of Risk and Insurance, the North American Actuarial Journal, Risk Management and Insurance Review, Journal of Insurance Issues, Journal of Insurance Regulation, the CPCU eJournal, and Best’s Review. Dr. McCullough currently serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Insurance Regulation. She has won research grants and awards from the Journal of Insurance Regulation, the State Farm Companies Foundation, and the Risk Management and Insurance Society as well as Florida State University and the State of Florida.

Dr. McCullough teaches in both the undergraduate and on-line masters programs, and currently coordinates the online masters program in risk management and insurance. Her courses include principles of risk management and insurance and commercial risk management. While at the University of Georgia she received two teaching awards. She was the recipient of the 2005 Les B. Strickler Innovation in Instruction Award from the American Risk and Insurance Program for her work on risk management case projects with Robert E. Hoyt and Randy E. Dumm. She has received instructional grants from Florida State University and the State Farm Insurance Companies.

Dr. McCullough is a member of the American Risk and Insurance Association, Southern Risk and Insurance Association, Western Risk and Insurance Association, and the Risk Management Research Council. She currently serves as the Second Vice President of the Southern Risk and Insurance Association as well as the membership chair of the American Risk and Insurance Association. She was named as a distinguished reviewer for the Journal of Insurance Issues in 2001.

Other Research Associates working with the center

Earl J. "Jay" Baker, Ph.D.

Since 1971 Dr. Baker has conducted studies to document how and why the public responds to hurricane threats. Study locations have included every Gulf and Atlantic coastal state from Texas through Massachusetts, plus Hawaii, and he has analyzed evacuations in more than 30 hurricanes in the United States. He has also conducted studies on hazard perception and evacuation response intentions and has applied the findings of his research to the development of hurricane evacuation plans. His research includes how public officials use hurricane forecast information in making evacuation decisions, public attitudes toward hurricane hazard mitigation options, household preparedness for disasters, and public response to other hazards, including tornadoes, floods, and nuclear power plants.

He has worked on methods to assess the costs incurred by local governments in evacuating residents and has worked with colleagues to evaluate the effectiveness of local government comprehensive plans in Florida in mitigating certain aspects of hurricane hazards in coastal areas. He is currently assisting the State of Florida update its behavioral assumptions for hurricane evacuation plans statewide. He was a founding partner in the inception of the National Hurricane Conference continues to be on the conference’s planning committee. He is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at Florida State University.

Janet Dilling

Janet Dilling is the Director of the Center for Disaster Risk Policy and the Florida Public Affairs Center at Florida State University where she specializes in the fields of emergency management and organizational development. She also serves as the Director of the Emergency Management Graduate Certificate Program at FSU and is a principal faculty member for the Askew School of Public Administration and policy's emergency management curriculum. Janet has been a public manager for over 20 years. She is past president of the American Society of Professional Emergency Planners, is active in other national and international professional organizations and is a frequent speaker at state, national, and international meetings and conferences. She holds an MPA from the University of Idaho and is completing her doctoral studies (ABD) in Public Administration at FSU.

James Elsner, Ph.D.

James Elsner is the Shaw Professor of Geography at Florida State University where he teaches applied statistics to graduate students. Prior to joining the Department of Geography he was an Associate Professor of Meteorology where he earned his tenure. Dr. Elsner received his Ph.D. in Meteorology from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the Department of Geosciences.

His research focuses on hurricanes and climate. He uses modern statistical techniques to understand and predict hurricane activity on time scales ranging from a few weeks to decades ahead. His work on the linkage between climate change and hurricane intensity has generated widespread public attention. He has written more than 90 research articles and two books. He has received numerous research grants and contracts to study the hurricane problem. Dr. Elsner is currently working to better understand how insured windstorm losses can be anticipated based on changes and fluctuations in the climate.

He has given presentations on hurricanes to industry and academic groups including Risk Management Solutions, AIR Worldwide, and Renaissance Reinsurance (RenRe). Dr. Elsner is also President of Climatek, a company that develops software for hurricane-risk models.

Henry Fuelberg, Ph.D.

Dr. Henry Fuelberg is the David W. Stuart Professor of Meteorology. He received his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in 1976, taught at St. Louis University for eight years, and has been at Florida State University since 1985. His teaching activities include synoptic and mesometeorology, as well as survey courses for majors and non-majors.

Dr. Fuelberg’s research interests include forecasting the onset and cessation of lightning and how lightning data can be used to determine whether a particular storm is severe or non-severe. He also investigates lightning within hurricanes, exploring whether lightning bursts within the eye wall can be used to forecast rapid changes in storm intensity. He uses a mix of diagnostic studies as well as computer simulations of tropical systems.

Another general research topic is the global transport of air pollution and the ability of satellites to track the pollution. He has participated in eight NASA airborne field projects around the globe and has had continuous NASA funding for the past thirty-one years. He recently served on a National Academy of Sciences panel on global pollution transport.

Robert Hart, Ph.D.

Dr. Robert Hart has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Meteorology at the Florida State University since 2003. He received his Ph.D. in Meteorology from Pennsylvania State University in 2001, and did his initial postdoctoral research as an NCAR/UCAR Visiting Scientist.

Dr. Hart’s expertise is in the area of the structural evolution of cyclones of all types, numerical modeling of hurricanes, and defining the role of hurricanes in climate as a whole. His cyclone research was awarded the American Meteorological Society’s Banner I. Miller Award in 2007, and his more recent research on hurricanes and climate was awarded the American Meteorological Society’s Editor’s Paper of Note in 2008. He is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review.

Sungmoon Jung, Ph.D.

Sungmoon Jung is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the joint College of Engineering by Florida A&M University - Florida State University. He received his Ph.D. in structural engineering in 2004 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he worked for another year as a Postdoctoral Researcher. From 2006 to 2008, he worked for Optimization Technology team in Caterpillar Champaign Simulation Center. Since 2008, he has joined the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering. Dr. Jung's research focuses on safety and sustainability of structures such as buildings and bridges. He uses modern computational methods along with field measurements to understand the behavior of structures, and to design damage-tolerant materials and structures. His research interests include structural health monitoring, wind engineering, structural optimization, and reliability assessment. Dr. Jung has published over 10 refereed journal papers in these research areas.

Forrest Masters. Ph.D.

Dr. Masters joined the University of Florida as an Assistant Professor of Civil and Coastal Engineering in 2006. His research interests include field measurement of surface-level tropical cyclone winds, wind and wind-driven rain effects on structures and the stochastic simulation of natural hazard events. Dr. Masters has deployed for 23 named tropical cyclones, including all of the major hurricanes in 2004 and 2005.

During landfall, he and his colleagues deploy mobile weather stations to capture ground-level wind speeds and instrument single-family homes to measure wind pressure loading (fcmp.ce.ufl.edu). After the storm, damage assessments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the building stock and the codes and standards that guided their construction. Recently, he developed a portable hurricane simulator to reproduce the actual dynamics of hurricane winds impinging on a low-rise structure at full scale.

Dr. Masters has given over 35 invited presentations on his research. PBS, the Discovery Channel, National Public Radio, CNN, Popular Mechanics and MIT Technology Review have also produced pieces on his work. The National Science Board invited him to participate in the Workshop on Hurricane Science and Engineering, and he serves as a member of the ASCE Structural Wind Engineering Committee and the Task Committee on Computer-Aided Wind Engineering. He is also a member of ASTM E6.51 (Performance of Windows, Doors, Skylights and Curtain Walls). Recently, he was named as one of the top 50 trendsetters by Florida Trend Magazine.

Charles R. McClure, Ph.D.

Dr. Charles R. McClure is the Francis Eppes Professor of Information Studies at the College of Information, Florida State University. He was selected as the first recipient of an Eppes endowed chair at FSU in 1999. From 1986-1999 he was at Syracuse University School of Information Studies - the last five as Distinguished Professor. He teaches courses in planning/evaluation of information services, U.S. government information policies, evaluation of networked services, library/information center management, and research methods. He completed his Ph.D. in Library and Information Services from Rutgers University.

As Director of the Information Use Management and Policy Institute at Florida State University, he and the Institute staff work on a range of funded research projects, promote interdisciplinary research efforts at the university and with other organizations, and actively participate in various information policy debates and initiatives at the state and federal level. The Information Institute, founded in 1999, provides a highly visible and active research arm of the College of Information. Between 1999 and 2008 the Information Institute has received some $5 million in funded research.

Dr. McClure is currently the Principal Investigator for an annual national survey of public library funding and technology access that is funded by the American Library Association and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He is also the Principal investigator for a study funded by the U.S. Institute for Museum and Library Services to improve evaluation approaches for public library services and technology deployment. He recently established a collaborative study group at FSU to obtain external research funding in the area of health informatics. McClure has published some 50 books and over 300 papers and reports.

Robert Meyer, Ph.D.

Robert Meyer is the Warren Johnson Professor of Marketing at the University of Miami and Co-Director of the Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently on leave from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a noted scholar whose research focuses on consumer decision analysis, sales response modeling, and decision making under uncertainty. Professor Meyer's work has appeared in a wide variety of professional journals and books, including the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, and Management Science. He has served as the editor of Marketing Letters as well as an associate editor of Marketing Science and the Journal of Consumer Research, and currently serves on the editorial review board of several major journals.

As co-director of Wharton's Risk center, some of Dr. Meyer's recent research has focused on how individuals decide to invest in mitigation against low-probability, high-consequence, events such as hurricanes, earthquakes, or terrorist attacks. Using laboratory simulations Dr. Meyer and his colleagues have been able to show that the much-publicized failures of preparation that contributed to the losses from such recent events as the Asian Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina are consistent with a number of hard-wired biases in how people respond to risk. This includes a tendency for people to fail to learn as much as they should from near-misses, and under-invest in instruments whose value can only be realized in the long run. One of the goals of the risk center is to aid the private and public sectors in developing strategies that allow these biases to be overcome.

Dr. Meyer recently completed a six-year term as the Vice Dean of Wharton's doctoral programs. His teaching interests include courses in New Product Management, Research Methods, and Marketing Strategy, which he has taught at the MBA, executive MBA, and doctoral levels. He is also an active participant in a number of Wharton's executive education programs.

Dr. Meyer first joined the Wharton marketing faculty in 1990 after spending eight years at the Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA, and two years at the Graduate School of Industrial Administration at Carnegie-Mellon University. He also has served as a visiting professor in the school of economics at the University of Sydney. He received his PhD in Transportation Geography from the University of Iowa in 1980.

Philip Sura, Ph.D.

Dr. Sura joined the Department of Meteorology at Florida State University as an Assistant Professor in early 2008 through the Extreme Events in Climate Cluster (which is part of FSU's Pathways of Excellence program). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Hamburg, Germany, in 2000. Before joining Florida State University he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, and as a research scientist at the NOAA-CIRES Climate Diagnostics Center in Boulder, Colorado.

Dr. Sura’s current research is focused on the stochastic-dynamical understanding of extreme events in climate. Extreme events in climate (such as hurricanes, droughts, windstorms etc.) are by definition rare, but they can have a significant impact on affected people and countries. In non-technical terms, an extreme event is a high-impact, hard-to-predict phenomenon that is beyond our normal (Gaussian bell curve) expectations. In technical terms, an extreme event is often defined as the non-normal (non-Gaussian) tail of the data’s probability density function (PDF). Understanding extremes has become an important objective in climate variability research because climate (and weather) risk assessment depends on knowing and understanding the non-Gaussian tails of PDFs.

In recent years, new tools that make use of advanced stochastic-dynamical theory have evolved to evaluate extreme events and the physics that govern these events. These tools take advantage of the non-Gaussian structure of the PDF by linking a stochastic (probabilistic) model derived from first physical principles to the observed non-Gaussianity. The detailed assessment of non-Gaussian variability in the atmosphere and the ocean is of great practical significance because it provides a framework to predict the probability of extreme events in the climate system.

Center Staff

Patrick F. Maroney, Director

Patrick F. Maroney is the Kathryn Magee Kip Professor in the Department of Risk Management/Insurance, Real Estate and Business Law. He has been a faculty member at Florida State University since 1981. He currently serves as the director of the Florida Catastrophic Storm Risk Management Center. Prior to that position he served as the associate dean for Graduate Programs in the College of Business from 2003 until January 2008. He also served as the Chairman of the Risk Management and Insurance Department from 1994 until the fall semester of 2001.

Professor Maroney has authored or co-authored more than forty articles and books. Professor Maroney’s research concentration is in the area of insurance law and regulation. Articles have appeared in the Journal of Insurance Regulation, Risk Management and Insurance Review, Florida State University Law Review, Florida Bar Journal, Journal of Insurance Issues, Insurance Counsel Journal, and the American Business Law Journal. He has presented papers at regional and national academic confernces. He has received a Teaching Incentive Program award for excellence in teaching and has been named Student Organization Advisor of the Year.

Professor Maroney was a member of the NCCI Insurance Fraud Commission. He has served as a board member of the Southern Risk and Insurance Association and as President of that organization. He was the executive consultant to the Automobile Insurance Task Force and a co-author of teh Insurance Study of Sinkholes. He has served as continuing education chair of the Administrative Law section of the Florida Bar and been recognized for outstanding service to the section. He has also servied as an officer and board member of the section.

Charles M. Nyce, Ph.D., Associate Director

Dr. Charles M. Nyce, CPCU, ARM, joined the Florida Catastrophic Storm Risk Management Center in January 2009 as the associate director. His primary function is to conduct, coordinate and disseminate research efforts that are expected to have an immediate impact on policy and practices related to catastrophic storm preparedness. His primary research area is catastrophic risk finance.

Prior to joining the Storm Center he served as Senior Director of Knowledge Resources at the American Institute for CPCU and the Insurance Institute of America. He is the primary author of CPCU 510 – Foundations of Risk Management and Insurance and a coordinating author on ARM 54 – Risk Assessment and INS 22 – Personal Insurance. He has been a faculty member at the University of Georgia and University of Hartford. He has taught enterprise risk management and corporate risk management classes at both the undergraduate and graduate levels at LaSalle University, University of Georgia, University of Hartford and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to articles on catastrophic risk financing, he has authored numerous articles on a variety of risk management and insurance topics, including title insurance, IPOs, enterprise risk management, predictive analytics and natural hazards. In addition to the texts mentioned above, he has been a contributing author on four other textbooks.

A magna cum laude graduate of LaSalle University in Philadelphia, Dr. Nyce earned a B.A. degree in mathematics. He then earned both an M.A. and a doctoral degree in insurance and risk management from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Lorilee A. Schneider, Ph.D., Associate Director

Prior to joining the Storm Center staff, Dr. Lorilee A. Schneider was an Assistant Professor of Risk Management and Insurance in the J. Mack Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University. She joined that department's faculty in 1999, and also served as the department's Director of External Relations, undergraduate program advisor and faculty adviser to the Zeta Chapter of Gamma Iota Sigma, a national risk management and student organization. Dr. Schneider received her Bachelor of Science from the University of Alabama in 1990 and her Ph.D. from Georgia State University in 1995. Dr. Schneider served as Assistant Professor of Finance at Georgia Southern University from 1994-1998.

Dr. Schneider's areas of research interest include business risk management decision making models, global risk issues, catastrophe risk financing and reputational risk management. She has presented numerous papers on these subjects to both academic and industry groups. Her consulting clients have included Fortune 500 companies as well as smaller companies and nonprofit organizations. Currently, Dr. Schneider is especially involved in catastrophe risk financing programs for several companies within the utilities industry.

Dr. Schneider has lectured on a broad range of risk-related topics.Her areas of greatest teaching expertise, however, lie in business risk management, global risk assessment, insurance company strategic management, risk modeling and ethics. She has spoken to numerous corporate, nonprofit, government, and student groups around the United States on these topics.

Sue Ellen Smith, Program Manager

Sue Ellen Smith is Program Manager for the Florida Catastrophic Storm Risk Management Center. She developed and manages the Center's extensive website (www.stormrisk.org), Storm Center Brief newsletter and other publications, manages outreach and media relations, tracks and reports the Center's progress towards its legislative-mandated mission, organizes and manages conferences and symposia, and assists the Center Director in managing research projects as well as Center operations.

Ms. Smith has 20 years of experience managing communications, programs, and fundraising for nonprofit organizations and academic institutions. Her experience includes managing educational projects, media relations, and fundraising for international and state conservation organizations. A skilled and successful grant writer, she has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for nonprofit organizations. Prior to joining the Center in January 2008, she managed communications, outreach, special projects, and conferences for a national disaster mitigation organization. She has a B.S. in Journalism from the University of Florida.

Brad Karl, Graduate Assistant

Brad Karl is a student at Florida State University pursuing a Master's degree in Risk Management/Insurance. He has a Bachelor's degree with a double major in Risk Management/Insurance and Finance from Florida State University. He has completed internships with Walt Disney World, The Florida Association of Insurance Agents, and Arthur J. Gallagher Risk Management Services, Inc.

David Pooser, Graduate Assistant

David Pooser is a graduate student at Florida State University pursuing a Ph.D. in Risk Management/Insurance. David has a Bachelor's degree in Risk Management/Insurance from Florida State University, and was the first recipient of the University Associate Certified Risk Manager designation. He has worked in both the nonprofit and legal sectors.

Ashley McCreadie

Ashley is a junior majoring in Risk Management/Insurance. She is a member of the Florida State University Insurance Society. Ashley is on leadership for the Marching Chiefs, and is actively involved with the Seminole Sound Pep Band. She plans on graduating in December of 2010 and going into risk management.