Erwann O. Michel-Kerjan is the managing director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center, which for 25 years has been at the forefront of research into catastrophes. Dr. Michel-Kerjan also teaches Value Creation in the Wharton School’s MBA Program.

Dr. Michel-Kerjan’s research focuses on managing and financing extreme events, such as natural disasters and terrorist attacks. The range of his work includes global risk management, climate change, and nuclear non-proliferation. He co-leads, with Howard Kunreuther, the multi-year Wharton Extreme Events initiative on the future of natural disaster protection and risk financing. He advises top decision makers around the world on these issues and his views regularly appear in leading media.

In 2008, Dr. Michel-Kerjan was elected chairman of the OECD Secretary-General High Level Advisory Board on Financial Management of Large-Scale Catastrophes established by the Secretary General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). He has also served as a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on "Innovation and Leadership in Reducing Risks from Natural Disasters." He has been a member of the Global Risks Network of the World Economic Forum since 2005. In 2007, he was honored by the World Economic Forum (Davos) as a Young Global Leader, a five-year nomination bestowed to recognize and acknowledge the most extraordinary leaders of the world under the age of 40.

He is Faculty Research Associate at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, where he completed his doctoral studies in mathematics and economics. He has also studied at McGill University and Harvard University.

Dr. Michel-Kerjan has authored or coauthored more than fifty publications on financial management and global risk governance. He is the author of Seeds of Disaster, Roots of Response: How Private Action Can Reduce Public Vulnerability (Cambridge University Press, 2006), At War with the Weather (with. H. Kunreuther, MIT Press, 2009).

Paul Slovic is a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and a founder and President of Decision Research. He holds a B.A. from Stanford University (1959) and an M.A (1962) and Ph.D. (1964) from the University of Michigan. He studies human judgment, decision making, and risk analysis.

He and his colleagues worldwide have developed methods to describe risk perceptions and measure their impacts on individuals, industry, and society. He publishes extensively and serves as a consultant to industry and government. His most recent books include The Perception of Risk (Earthscan; 2000), The Social Amplification of Risk (with N. Pidgeon and R. Kasperson) (Cambridge University Press; 2003) and The Construction of Preference (with S. Lichtenstein) (Cambridge University Press, 2006). Dr. Slovic is a past President of the Society for Risk Analysis and in 1991 received its Distinguished Contribution Award. In 1993 he received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association. In 1995 he received the Outstanding Contribution to Science Award from the Oregon Academy of Science. He has received honorary doctorates from the Stockholm School of Economics (1996) and the University of East Anglia (2005).

He has recently been a member of the Global Agenda Council on Humanitarian Assistance of the World Economic Forum and a member of the steering committee for the workshop on Crisis Communication, Department of Homeland Security.