From 1 July 2023, the Lloyd’s Register Foundation Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk will witness leadership renewals. Professor Koh Chan Ghee will hand over the IPUR Directorship to current Deputy Director Professor Leonard Lee, and Dr Olivia Jensen will be concurrently appointed as IPUR’s Deputy Director on top of her existing responsibilities as Lead Scientist for Environment and Climate.
As the Institute’s inaugural Director and Chair Professor, Prof Koh was entrusted the critical mission of establishing the Institute from scratch. After taking on the role in May 2019, Prof Koh expeditiously recruited and built a capable team that could collectively achieve the Institute’s vision – to be a leading global research institute in the analysis of risk perception and evaluation of risk communication.
“I am indeed very grateful for the dedication and passion displayed by my colleagues at IPUR as well as the strong support from the NUS administration. Together, we have accomplished many milestones in not only research but also public engagement and outreach. I now confidently pass the baton to Prof Leonard Lee and his team, knowing that they will propel the Institute to new levels of success,” said Prof Koh.
A view into the future
Prof Lee will take over the helm at IPUR, having previously served as the Deputy Director for nearly four years. A trained behaviour scientist, Prof Lee leads the Institute’s Project Wavelength, a flagship project which seeks to undercover the fundamental differences on how people perceive risk in order to help communicators attune to the frequency of their audiences.
Through multi-stakeholder workshops with academics and practitioners in relevant spaces, Project Wavelength aims to acquire a revised understanding of the factors and dimensions that have become essential to how people—both the public and experts—perceive risk in Asia today. A Professor of Marketing at NUS Business School, Prof Lee also works on different translational projects at the Institute including improving treatment outcomes for diabetes management. The project looks at how beliefs can negatively impact diabetes-related outcomes among individuals with type-2 diabetes and leverages findings to promote more effective care and treatment.
Over the years, Prof Lee’s research has received several awards such as the Paul Green Award (Finalist) from the Journal of Marketing Research, the Franco Nicosia Best Competitive Paper Award from the Association for Consumer Research, and the Robert Ferber Award (Honorable Mention) from the Journal of Consumer Research.
Dr Jensen’s new role as the Deputy Director will extend the Institute’s focus on outreach and education programmes. Most notably, she will lead ongoing efforts to enhance IPUR’s risk communication course to create a more engaging, interactive and effective learning experience, to enable learners to understand and communicate risk information more successfully.
Alongside her research on environmental risks, Dr Jensen is working with collaborators in the UK to pioneer an intervention project which supports communities in making sense of risk. Known as the Risk Know-How framework, the project provides a platform for community practitioners to share experience and develop resources to match training needs. Furthermore, the framework sets out the concepts and pathways to understanding risk and establishes a foundation for measuring and tracking it.
