Born and raised in Germany, Dr. Thomas Eppel came to the United States in 1984 and enrolled in the Ph.D. program of the Psychology Department at the University of Southern California.

After receiving his Ph.D. in Mathematical Psychology with an emphasis on decision analysis, Dr. Eppel joined the faculty of the Krannert Graduate School of Management at Purdue University. In 1996 he returned to California to become Vice President of Decision Insights, Inc., a consulting company specializing in decision and risk analysis.

In January 2000, Dr. Eppel joined the staff at the Graduate School of Management at the University of California Irvine as an Assistant Dean, responsible for curriculum development around the “Information Technology for Management” focus. He currently lectures at the Paul Merage School of Business, UC Irvine.

Dr. Eppel has published numerous articles, book chapters and reports in the areas of decision and risk analysis. He has been involved in consulting projects with clients such as the U.S. Department of Energy, the California Department of Health Services, EPRI, SANDIA, the Joint Research Centre (Commission of the European Communities), and others.

In addition, Dr. Eppel designed and taught several executive training seminars. He authored a textbook and developed instructional software in statistics and has been widely recognized for his outstanding teaching.

His teaching awards include the R.B. and Mary Stewart Distinguished Teaching Award from the Krannert School of Management at Purdue University and an award for Innovation in Teaching from the University of California at Irvine, as well as several awards given by students. In 2000, Business Week’s rankings and profiles of MBA programs listed him as one of the two most popular professors at the Graduate School of Management, UC Irvine.