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Threatening Communications and Behavior: Perspectives on the Pursuit of Public Figures (2011)

Chapter: Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Contributors

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Contributors." National Research Council. 2011. Threatening Communications and Behavior: Perspectives on the Pursuit of Public Figures. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13091.
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Appendix
Biographical Sketches of Contributors

Daniel Rex Bernard is a doctoral student in the Department of Communication, a graduate research assistant in the Department of Communication, and a research associate for the Center for Risk and Crisis Management, all at the University of Oklahoma. His areas of research include the development of technology in theoretical and applied communication studies, risk and crisis communication, deception detection, and social influence and the development of persuasive campaigns. He holds an M.A. in communication from California State University at Fresno.


Cherie Chauvin, Editor, is a program officer at the National Research Council, working on several studies and workshops relevant to defense and national security issues. Previously, she held several positions with the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), where her work included support for military operations and liaison relationships in Japan, South Korea, and Mongolia, as well as conducting intelligence collection operations in Afghanistan to answer strategic and tactical military intelligence requirements. In recognition of her service, she was awarded the DIA Civilian Expeditionary Medal, the Department of the Army Commander’s Award for Civilian Service, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence National Meritorious Unit Citation. She holds a B.S. in cognitive science from the University of California at San Diego, an M.A. in international relations from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, and an M.S. in strategic intelligence from the National Defense Intelligence College.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Contributors." National Research Council. 2011. Threatening Communications and Behavior: Perspectives on the Pursuit of Public Figures. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13091.
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Cindy K. Chung is a consultant and senior investigator for various text analysis projects in health psychology, personality psychology, and the counterintelligence field and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. She has been involved in the development of text analysis tools and methods across several languages. Her work on psychological assessments based on natural language has been published in multiple journal articles and book chapters. She holds a Ph.D. in social and personality psychology from the University of Texas at Austin.


J. Reid Meloy is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the School of Medicine of the University of California at San Diego, an adjunct professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, and a faculty member of the San Diego Psychoanalytic Institute. He is also a consultant to the counter-intelligence division of the FBI, a member of the Fixated Research Group for the United Kingdom’s Home Office concerning threats to the Royal Family and British political figures, and a teacher for the Netherlands National Police. He has also been a technical consultant to the television program CSI since its inception in 2001. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, past president of the American Academy of Forensic Psychology, and president of Forensis, Inc., a nonprofit, public benefit corporation devoted to forensic psychiatric and psychological research. He has authored, coauthored, or edited more than 200 papers and 10 books. He holds a diploma in forensic psychology of the American Board of Professional Psychology.


H. Dan O’Hair is dean of the College of Communications and Information Studies and professor of communication at the University of Kentucky. He has published more than 90 articles and chapters and 15 books on risk and health communication, public relations, business communication, media management, communication, risk management, and terrorism. He has served on the editorial boards of numerous research journals and is a past editor of the Journal of Applied Communication Research. He is a past president of the National Communication Association, and he has served as an education and training consultant to dozens of private, nonprofit, and government organizations. He holds a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Oklahoma.


James W. Pennebaker is professor and chair of the Department of Psychology and the Regents Centennial Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. His research explores the links among natural language, traumatic experience, and health at the individual, group, and cultural levels. His earlier research focused on how writing or talking about emotional upheavals influences mental and physical health. More

Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Contributors." National Research Council. 2011. Threatening Communications and Behavior: Perspectives on the Pursuit of Public Figures. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13091.
×

recently, in collaboration with colleagues in computational linguistics, cognitive psychology, communication, and social psychology, he has been examining how people’s natural use of words can be powerful predictors of people’s health, personality, social situations, and the ways they relate to others. He received the Pavlov Award from the Pavlovian Society. He is the author or editor of 8 books and more than 200 articles. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and an honorary doctorate from the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve.


Randy R. Roper is a doctoral student in the Communication Department at the University of Oklahoma. His areas of research include interpersonal and organizational communication, with an emphasis on family conflict and grief communication. He holds a B.S. in public relations and an M.A. in family life ministry from Oklahoma Christian University.


Philip E. Rubin is chief executive officer and a senior scientist at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, Connecticut, a research institute with a primary focus on the science of the spoken and written word and their biological basis. He is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Surgery, Otolaryngology, a research affiliate in the Department of Psychology, and a fellow of Trumbull College, all at Yale University. Previously, he was the director of the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences at the National Science Foundation. He has served as cochair of the interagency Committee on Science Human Subjects Research Subcommittee of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), under the auspices of the Executive Office of the President and a member of the NSTC Interagency Working Group on Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Task Force on Anti-Terrorism Research and Development. He is the chair of the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences of the National Research Council. He received a B.A. from Brandeis University in psychology and linguistics and an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut in experimental psychology.


Barbara A. Wanchisen is director of the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences and the Board on Human-Systems Integration of the National Research Council. Previously, she was the executive director of the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological, and Cognitive Sciences, and she was instrumental in the founding of the federation’s Foundation for the Advancement of Behavioral and Brain Sciences to assume the educational mission of the federation. Prior to her Washington work, she was a professor in the Department of Psychology and director of the college-wide Honors Program at Baldwin-Wallace College. She is a member of the Psychonomic Society, the Association for Behavior Analysis-International,

Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Contributors." National Research Council. 2011. Threatening Communications and Behavior: Perspectives on the Pursuit of Public Figures. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13091.
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and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a fellow of the American Psychological Association. She has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior and The Behavior Analyst. She received a B.A. in English and philosophy from Bloomsburg University, an M.A. in English from Villanova University, and a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Temple University.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Contributors." National Research Council. 2011. Threatening Communications and Behavior: Perspectives on the Pursuit of Public Figures. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13091.
×
Page 103
Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Contributors." National Research Council. 2011. Threatening Communications and Behavior: Perspectives on the Pursuit of Public Figures. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13091.
×
Page 104
Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Contributors." National Research Council. 2011. Threatening Communications and Behavior: Perspectives on the Pursuit of Public Figures. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13091.
×
Page 105
Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Contributors." National Research Council. 2011. Threatening Communications and Behavior: Perspectives on the Pursuit of Public Figures. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13091.
×
Page 106
Threatening Communications and Behavior: Perspectives on the Pursuit of Public Figures Get This Book
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Today's world of rapid social, technological, and behavioral change provides new opportunities for communications with few limitations of time and space. Through these communications, people leave behind an ever-growing collection of traces of their daily activities, including digital footprints provided by text, voice, and other modes of communication. Meanwhile, new techniques for aggregating and evaluating diverse and multimodal information sources are available to security services that must reliably identify communications indicating a high likelihood of future violence.

In the context of this changed and changing world of communications and behavior, the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences of the National Research Council presents this volume of three papers as one portion of the vast subject of threatening communications and behavior. The papers review the behavioral and social sciences research on the likelihood that someone who engages in abnormal and/or threatening communications will actually then try to do harm. The focus is on how the scientific knowledge can inform and advance future research on threat assessments, in part by considering the approaches and techniques used to analyze communications and behavior in the dynamic context of today's world.

The papers in the collection were written within the context of protecting high-profile public figures from potential attach or harm. The research, however, is broadly applicable to U.S. national security including potential applications for analysis of communications from leaders of hostile nations and public threats from terrorist groups. This work highlights the complex psychology of threatening communications and behavior, and it offers knowledge and perspectives from multiple domains that contribute to a deeper understanding of the value of communications in predicting and preventing violent behaviors.

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