Andrew Collins joined Northumbria University Department of Geography and Environmental Management in 1997, led the establishment of the world’s first disaster management and sustainable development postgraduate programme launched in 2000, and the Disaster and Development Centre (DDC) launched in 2004. He supervises a community of PhD students spanning the disaster and development field and coordinates a substantive group of affiliates both internal and external to the university. His work has been active in more than 20 countries throughout the world including the UK. It focuses on issues involving links between disaster and development through research, teaching and learning. This requires addressing hazards, disasters and complex emergencies in an interdisciplinary manner, interacting with civil societal and institutional perspectives. Research is complimented by initiatives for capacity building, community health, advocacy, and integrated emergency preparedness and response. An overall objective is to facilitate resilience to, and wellbeing from, disaster or development at multiple levels. Andrew’s orientation in this field includes early exposure to the Middle East conflict, extended voluntary service in wartime Mozambique and international engagements with development and disaster reduction thereafter. He regularly serves on high level advisory boards, for committees of major international conferences and comments for the international media.

Theoretical, methodological and policy aspects of disaster reduction Health ecology Sustainable development Human security Interlinked issues of environment and society Population displacement Risk Governance Education Environmental and disaster management

Hari Pant is an Assistant Professor in department of Environmental, Geographic and Geological Sciences, Lehman College, the City University of New York (CUNY). He received Ph.D.in  Environmental Biology Dalhousie University Halifax Canada in 1998. He is Co-Chair of the Department of Environmental, Geographic and Geological Sciences at Lehman College of the City University of New York (September 2009 – August 2010).

Hari Pant research interest includes biogeochemical cycles, sediment/water quality, ecological indicators, global change.

Col. Joseph Booth is the Executive Director of the Stephenson Disaster Management Institute. Prior to joining SDMI, Col. Booth was the Homeland Security and Public Safety Solutions Manager in the IT sector of Northrop Grumman Corporation. He was a member of the Northrop Grumman Combined Homeland Security Integration Group, and the Critical Infrastructure Protection Integrated Strategy Team that develops corporate business strategy to transition sophisticated technologies into the state and local government homeland security market.Prior to Northrop Grumman, Col. Booth served as a Deputy Superintendent of Louisiana State Police (LSP) and was the critical incident commander over preparation and response for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. While with the LSP, he chaired the State Emergency Response Commission, and served as a subject matter expert for the Department of Defense (DOD) Inter Agency Board. He also served as the State Program Manager for the DOD Homeland Security Command and Control Advanced Concepts and Technology Demonstration, and a DOD sponsored cyber security program designed create a private and public sector partnership to protect critical infrastructure from cyber attacks. He has received commendations from several Governors, the Louisiana National Guard, NASA, and other government agencies. Col. Booth initiated and led Louisiana’s communications interoperability program and formed a multi-state Gulf Coast Coalition to implement an integrated, single architecture for first responders in the multi-state area. He also led the implementation of the nation’s initial effort in 700MHz technology for public safety communication. He is an original member of Zola’s Group, an affiliation of federal and military intelligence and information-gathering agencies seeking to remove administrative and bureaucratic impediments to intelligence sharing in the post-9/11 environment.

His research interest is command and control environments, communications interoperability, and information fusion.

Claudio Nicolini after his doctoral degree from University of Padua and Adjunct Professor at University of Bari, he moved for 16 years to the United States at Brown, MIT, BNL and Temple University School of Medicine first as Associate Professor of Pathology and later Professor and Chairman of Biophysics in 1976. . Since 1984, he was called in Italy as “eminent scientist” to the Chair of Biophysics of the University of Genoa (www.ibf.unige.it ), where he was Director of Biophysics Institute and later, and since 1994 he is President of the Fondazione Elba-Nicolini (www.fondazioneelba-nicolini.org) and of Nanoworld Institute, going still back and forth to Stanford and Arizona Universities. On 2008 has been elected as a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.and on 2010 honoris causa professor at Moscow State University He was Chief Editor of Cell Biophysics (USA) , Science and Technology Advisor to Italian Prime Minister Craxi, Member of the National Science and Technology Council upon Parliament election, Scientific Director Industrial Consortium CIREF, Founder Technobiochip; President Polo Nationale Bioelectronica and Scientific Technological Park of Elba Island. He received several awards and prizes and has authored more than 490 publications in international scientific journals (SCI), 32 patents (WPI) , 30 books and Series Editor in Bioelectronics (Plenum) and Nanobiotechnology (Pan Stanford). His main scientific activities concerned cancer research, biophysics and nanotechnology, pioneering world-wide chromatin structure-function, bioelectronics and nanobiotechnology.

His research interest in 1. Bioelectronics, 2. Nanobiotechnology

He has a Masters degree in Urban Development and Management (1991) from the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok Thailand, and a Ph.D. (1996) from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan.

His work mainly focuses on local environmental issues, working with local governments and national ministries of developing countries. Besides global and urban environmental issues, his current interests range from information management and rural development issues to community innovativeness, disaster management and NGO development.

Burgis was trained in the fields of DNA repair and toxicology.  He earned his Ph.D. from The University at Albany, S.U.N.Y. and his post-doctoral training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His current research interests focus on understanding mechanisms of nucleotide metabolism and toxicology.His lab is currently investigating the mechanism of substrate specificity and catalysis of ITPase; a key enzyme important for the exclusion of noncanonical purines from nucleic acid precursor pools.  By studying the human ITPase, and orthologs in other organisms, his lab aims to contribute to the fields of cardiovascular development, purine metabolism, cancer development, drug metabolism and bioterrorism. Dr. Burgis’ currently serves on the American Chemical Society Biochemistry Examination Committee.  His research program is supported by funding from the American Heart Association and American Cancer Society.

Biochemistry Biophysics Genetics Molecular Biology