Dr. Matt Thompson

Matt is the Director of Applied Fire Science at Pyrologix, a subsidiary of Vibrant Planet. He is a thought leader with proven success in innovation, communication and applied research. His work pioneered new horizons in wildfire hazard and risk assessment, incident response planning, decision support, landscape fuels strategy, and performance measurement – perhaps most notably the widespread adoption of the potential operational delineations (PODs) framework and related analytics. His research interests focus primarily on risk, systems, strategy, and decision analysis. Ultimately, he aspires to inform and catalyze actionable science to address the wildfire and climate crises with urgency and dispatch. Prior to joining Pyrologix, he spent 14 years in the Human Dimensions Program at the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station, where he served as a core member of the National Fire Decision Support Center and the Wildfire Risk Management Science Team. Matt has a B.S. in systems engineering from the University of Virginia, a M.S. in industrial engineering and operations research from the University of California, Berkeley, a M.S. in forest management from Oregon State University, a Ph.D. in forest engineering from Oregon State University, a professional certificate in strategic decision and risk management from Stanford University and was a Senior Executive Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.