American International Group Inc. announced that it has made an initial $4 million investment with Clemson University to develop a risk engineering and analytics center and to establish the Robert Benmosche Endowed Professorship in Risk Engineering and Systems Analytics, in honor of the company’s former president and chief executive officer.

AIG said the center will expand its engineering capabilities, complementing the company’s three-year investment in hiring 500 risk engineers and building an engineering and analytics center of excellence in Bangalore, India. The center’s mission will be to create a next-generation workforce skilled in risk engineering and systems analytics; develop innovative, technology-based tools to mitigate risk exposure; and facilitate the use of big data to make critical decisions, according to a statement from AIG.

AIG said the endowed professorship will develop curriculum and educational programs in the field of risk engineering and analytics, cultivate scientific investigation and research, recruit world-class faculty, and create marketable technologies that advance the field.

Key areas of research for the risk engineering and analytics center will include:

• Improving cybersecurity to make systems less vulnerable to natural and manmade disasters.
• Catastrophe modeling.
• Supply chain and logistics risk.
• Loss modeling and tool development.
• Dynamic pricing models for emerging countries.
• Predictive risk modeling.
• A coastal resilience initiative focused on risks from hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters.
• Enhanced capacity to analyze unstructured data to benchmark frequent loss events and causes.

Clemson will provide loss-prevention training with real-world and virtual reality-based exercises. The center will train analysts to join members of AIG’s loss-prevention team, with a special emphasis on understanding risks and how best to prevent and mitigate them.

In addition, online curricula will be created offering graduate certificates in risk engineering, systems analytics, catastrophe modeling and enterprise risk management. Courses will include decision-making under uncertainty, performance assessment of deteriorating systems, and post-disaster response and recovery. The certificates can be combined to meet requirements for a master’s degree now under development, AIG said.