Senior DRR and Hydrometeorological Hazards AdvisorMichael Ernst has over twenty-eight years of experience in the field of humanitarian assistance, disaster risk management, and international development, working in association with the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance and the legacy Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) for most of those years. In addition to providing technical assistance on Disaster Risk Reduction Programming and Early Warning System design he has also supported humanitarian response and early recovery efforts. He served as Deputy Team Leader on the USAID Nepal Earthquake Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART). He has also supported humanitarian assistance efforts for the West Africa Ebola epidemic, the floods and landslides in Uttarakhand, and Cyclone Phailin in Odisha, India. Michael also has extensive experience working with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and other UN System Agencies on disaster risk reduction and recovery issues in Asia, including early recovery efforts for the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2005, Typhoon Ketsana/Ondoy in the Philippines in 2009, Pakistan Floods of 2010, and the Indonesia Merapi Volcano and Mentawai Tsunami. He has also worked on community irrigation for a small NGO in the Lao P.D.R., and as a teacher in Kenya with the Peace Corps. Michael has a strong analytical background and interest in probability and complex systems including a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Civil and Environmental Engineering.