Eric Rasmussen, MD

Board of Directors

Board Member Eric RasmussenEric arrived as the founding Chief Executive Officer of InSTEDD in October 2007 and served as CEO until October 2010. Prior to joining InSTEDD, Eric was both Chairman of the Department of Medicine within the US Navy Medical Center near Seattle, Washington, and an advisor in humanitarian informatics for the US Office of the Secretary of Defense. He has led disaster response teams in more than 15 events, including the tsunami in Banda Aceh, Katrina, the Izmit earthquake, and Haiti.

With a European Master’s Degree in Disaster Medicine (MDM), he holds academic positions at several institutions and has been a Principal Investigator for both the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and for the National Science Foundation. He sits on several advisory boards, including USAID, the Crisis Management Resources Board for the National Academy of Sciences and the US Crisis Response Working Group.

In addition to his responsibilities at InSTEDD, he currently serves as Permanent Advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General‘s High-Level Forum on Water Disasters, as a member of the US CDC‘s Congressional Task Force on Global Biosurveillance, and as a member of Kofi Annan’s Global Humanitarian Forum in Geneva.