Connect and Engage at RAA Events

We hope you will join us in Santa Monica on June 21 for the fourth annual RAA Summer Reunion!

The RAA hosts a number of events throughout the year for alumni to connect and to hear from RAND researchers about current projects. Recent and forthcoming RAA events address critical issues like tackling antimicrobial resistance and dealing with uncertainty.

On April 4, the RAA will host an event in Washington, D.C. on RAND’s role in fighting antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Susan L. Marquis, dean of the Pardee RAND Graduate School, and policy analyst Jirka Taylor, will discuss the need for a holistic approach to address AMR, focusing on the health of humans, animals, and the environment. Taylor will give an update on the AIF project on tackling AMR, and he will talk about RAND research showing costs associated with disruptions to labor force, due to antimicrobial resistance, would amount to almost $6 trillion globally over the next four decades if today's levels of infection and resistance are maintained.

This month, Robert Lempert, director of RAND's Frederick S. Pardee Center for Longer Range Global Policy and the Future Human Condition, facilitated a hands-on experience on decisionmaking and navigating the future. RAA members and Pardee RAND alumni participated in the game “Decisions for the Decade” and learned how RAND uses games and scenario-based tools to help inform decisions under conditions of deep uncertainty.

RAND has been at the forefront of “serious” gaming for nearly seven decades. In the 1950s, RAND pioneered the use of political-military crisis games to study nuclear deterrence. In 1961, the idea for the U.S.-Soviet “red telephone” hotline grew out of a RAND game. And in the 1990s, the “Day After” approach was developed to explore the consequences of nuclear proliferation, global warming, cybercrime, and other threats.

In October, David Shlapak, who codirects the RAND Center for Gaming, discussed RAND’s innovative use of games. At “Gaming How to Keep Putin at Bay,” he talked about a series of war games RAND conducted in the spring of 2014, after Russia seized Crimea, to examine the threat Russia may present to NATO's Baltic members. He also described how RAND is using gaming to explore issues from urban planning to climate change, drug policy, and ISIS.

Listen to the Event Podcast