POP Day - Socio-economic risks

When AXA helps 15 researchers to better popularize their research in order to play a role in the public debate.

Explaining in simple terms our work to a researcher at the begining of his career can be a difficult task. However, it is a crucial skill in order to be able to convince a research advisor, to dialogue with coworkers from other fields or sensibilizing research managers to our work ; it is even more necessary to be able, when we get results, to play a role of expert in the public debate or with the economical actors.

This is why, for the first time, the AXA Research Funds has organized a "Pop Day" to help its granted fellows to popularize their work. After a day of breathing, elocution, writing, and layout or illustration techniques exercises to help them explaining simply and clearly their work and preventing them from loosing their consitency, five of them chosed to present the subject of their research before an audience built of board of directors from the AXA Group. Each researcher has illustrated its presentation with pictures, examples, charts and concrete anecdotes. Both the public and the jury enjoyed presentations on the following subjects. (Click on the names to see the presentations)  :

1. 1.     Probabilities in Decision Trees: the impact of action on uncertainty, by Shweta AGARWAL (PhD at the London School of Economics)
   
   
2. 2.    The Opium Market, Revenue Opportunities and Insurgency in Afghanistan’s Provinces, by Vincent BOVE (Post-Doc at the University of Essex)
   
   
3. 3.     The Risks of Greed and Fear in Financial Decision Making, by Helena PIKULINA (PhD at the Tilburg University)
   
   
4. 4.    Leading by example : an evolutionary perspective on group-decision making by Andrew KING (Post-Doc at Institute of Zoology of London) ;
   
   
5. 5.    Robustness in managing risk uncertainty by Anders SANDBERG (Post-Doc at the University of Oxford)

Through this event, AXA gives the proof of its will for contributing risk education from the source of the fundamental research.