Balancing our relationship with AI to enable better human + AI decisions
Prof Finale Doshi-Velez, 1 June 2023: Prof Finale describes some of the findings of her lab and related work on in the context of how people respond to AI recommendations and explanations, including ways to increase critical engagement. The discussion then broadens to implications relevant to broader decision-making and how to avoid these cognitive biases.
Rumours, myths and misinformation - why they stick in the world and how to shift them
Prof Heidi Larson, 23 September 2022: Prof Larson discusses some of the key factors that pave the way for rumours and misinformation to spread. She also offers little nuggets of takeaways:
1. Don’t engage with a piece of information or news that you may think is false.
2. It’s okay to not have all the information and admit that you don’t.
3. Be mindful of the information you’re sharing on and offline.
Understanding potential health & non-health beliefs in individuals with type 2 diabetes
Dr Carolyn Lo, 22 September 2022: Dr Lo presents her ongoing study on the effect of health and non-health beliefs on diabetes-related outcomes. The objectives of the study were to understand the beliefs that could negatively impact diabetes-related outcomes among individuals with type-2 diabetes and leverage findings to promote more effective care and treatment.
How everyday life risk attitudes influence our judgement
Dr Yiyun Shou, 22 September 2021: Humans make judgments and decisions under conditions of uncertainty all the time in their everyday lives. Dr Shou, IPUR Lead Scientist (Health and Lifestyle), discusses recent research findings on how various factors, such as one’s prior belief and different kinds of emotions, can influence our judgments in situations that involve risk.
Reducing forecast uncertainty of ecosystem changes in climate models
Dr Yanyan Cheng, 22 July 2021: Climate change research has a linked system of models of the ocean, atmosphere and land. This talk focuses on the land model used in climate change forecasting. In this study, Dr Cheng proposes a calibration framework that uses a parallel surrogate global optimisation algorithm (Xia & Shoemaker, 2021) to compute a model parameter values for ecosystem demographic models.
How your health may be affected by urbanisation
Dr O Jiaqing, 14 July 2021: Are you living in a highly urbanised environment? Do you find it stressful when you are in a crowded train? Chances are that most people will answer “yes”.
Dr O Jiaqing, Director of Postgraduate Studies (Psychology) Department of Psychology, Aberystwyth University, discusses why urbanisation might present certain health risks and how we can attempt to mitigate those risks, based on current scientific evidence.
Climate change communicators in Singapore and Thailand
Dr Louis Lebel, 27 May 2021: Much has been learnt about public awareness and understanding of climate change. However, what is less known are climate change communicators, and how their contributions are critical to success. Dr Lebel, Director, Unit for Social and Environmental Research, Faculty of Social Science, Chiang Mai University, shares insights from his study on what 45 communicators in Singapore and Bangkok, Thailand, had to say about climate risks, and the strategies they employed to communicate with different audiences. Check out the impact story here.
Health risk assessment of air pollution: a tale of two cities
Dr Wilson Tam, 20 May 2021: Director of Research at the Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies, presents his findings on examining the adverse effects of air pollution on health in Singapore and quantifying it as relative risk based on Accident and Emergency( A&E) data. The study also collected data from Hong Kong for the same period and computed the risk estimates using the same approach for comparison.
Technological risk perception & competency in the built environment
Prof Hwang Bon-Gang, 25 March 2021: from the Department of Building, School of Design & Environment at NUS, presents his study on developing an assessment tool to assess users’ technological risk perception (TRP) and technological competency (TC) for people in the built and construction industry.
The tool identifies technological risk perception gaps and subsequently designs suitable strategies to bridge this gap and help end-users such as project managers be more proficient with technologies. Check out the impact story here.