Jean Peccoud, Professor, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Walter Scott Jr. College of Engineering, Colorado State University, September 20, 2019

Jean Peccoud

Emeritus Professor
Biomedical and Chemical Engineering
Systems Engineering

Jean Peccoud, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Chemical & Biological Engineering and Systems Engineering at Colorado State University. He retired from CSU in 2026 to focus on the study of resilience under radical uncertainty—continuing a lifelong commitment to understanding how complex systems can be engineered, governed, and navigated responsibly.

He served as the Abell Chair in Synthetic Biology from 2016 to 2025.

Throughout his career, he worked at the interface of engineering and biology, advancing methods to design, build, and validate biological systems with greater reliability and security. His experience spans academia, Fortune 500 companies, and technology startups.

As founding Editor-in-Chief of Synthetic Biology (Oxford University Press), he helped shape the field’s early scholarly foundations. He also contributed to national biosecurity discussions through the Engineering Biology Research Consortium.

Contact Information

Resources

Research Interests

Dr. Peccoud’s current work focuses on extending systems engineering frameworks to address performance under irreducible uncertainty. His research examines resilience in safety-critical systems when stakes are high, models are incomplete, and outcomes resist reliable prediction.

He studies resilience not as robustness within a design envelope, but as effective performance when systems operate beyond that envelope. His work centers on human–system interaction under constraint, particularly in environments where predefined procedures or checklists are insufficient.

Working at the intersection of systems engineering, human factors, and decision science, he investigates how operators and engineered systems interact under stress, ambiguity, and time pressure.

Dr. Peccoud is interested in mentoring graduate students in Systems Engineering who wish to study resilience in high-consequence technical domains such as aviation, maritime navigation, autonomous systems, and advanced energy systems.

Illustrative research questions include:

  • How can systems be designed to support effective human decision-making when predefined procedures are insufficient?
    What design principles improve operator performance under deep uncertainty?
  • How should resilience be modeled when failure modes are emergent or poorly characterized?
  • How can engineered systems preserve human agency when operating outside their design envelope?
  • How can training, simulation, and system architecture be integrated to prepare operators for unanticipated events?

Education

  • M.S., 1987, University of Paris Orsay / AgroParisTech
  • Ph.D., 1991, University of Grenoble

Honors