Kyle King is TIEMS Treasurer.

Kyle is Founder and Managing Director of Capacity Building International (CBI). Kyle has spent 28 years in the emergency services and international security field with 8 of those years being with NATO.

He is Certified in the US Department of Defense as a Chief Fire Officer, and he helped design and build the first international DoD Fire and Emergency Services Certification Program for international students, and he also served as the first Civil Emergency Advisor to support NATO Operations.

Among his other accomplishments are that he worked to contribute to the development of NATO’s Security Force Assistance program and wrote NATO’s capacity building education and training program for Kosovo. Locations where he has worked in missions includes Bosnia, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Ukraine.

Kyle holds a Masters in Diplomacy and Terrorism Studies as BS/BA in Public Administration as well as numerous certifications from US Department of Defense, NATO, and other institutions. Currently Kyle is focused on supporting the Institute for Security Governance and international programs as well as being seconded to the Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

He is TIEMS partner in the Webinar series of International models in emergency management.

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Yosuke Okita is TIEMS Director Membership and Chapters.

Dr. Okita has significant experience working in international disaster and emergency management, including some international emergency missions as a member of the Japan Disaster Relief (JDR) team, which is deployed by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team.

As a JDR team member, he was deployed to the Algeria Earthquake (2003; rescue team), the Indonesia Tsunami (2004; medical team), the Pakistan Earthquake (2005; medical team), and the Christchurch Earthquake (2011; rescue team). As a UNDAC member, he participated in the missions for the Great East Japan Earthquake (2011), Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines (2013) and the Nepal Earthquake (2015). In the Nepal response, he was one of the first-arriving international assistance team members, and he served as the RDC (Reception Departure Centre) Manager, which was established at the Kathmandu airport.

He received LL.B. from Kyoto University, M.A. in International Relations/Master of Diplomacy from The Australian National University, and PhD in Media and Governance from Keio University in Japan. His PhD thesis is titled “Effects of the classification system in international search and rescue”. He published many academic articles on international urban search and rescue, disaster prevention and recovery, and disaster diplomacy in English and Japanese.

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Gilles Duserre is TIEMS Director for Research and Developement Activities.

Gilles DUSSERRE is full professor at IMT Mines Ales, head of Master of Science Disaster Managament and Environmental Impact (DAMAGE). He holds a Doctorate of Pharmacy (1987-1993), a Master degree "Chemistry of the Environment and Health - University of Marseille" (1995).

He conducted many researches in the field of risk management mainly related to risk analysis, evaluation of the consequences of technological disasters (fire, explosion and dispersion of toxic gases) and natural disasters (forest fires and floods), the efficiency of mitigation means (e.g. use of water curtains) and crisis management. He managed various studies within the framework of national, European and international projects, in partnership with industry, academia and major research organizations. He participated on various projects dedicated to resilience of critical infrastructures.

He was expert in several international missions such as for the French Ministry of the Interior in Malaysia in 1998 relative to the exposure of the population to the forest fire smokes and in South Africa in 2001 in relation to Crisis management.

He’s author and co author of about 50 international publications.

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Vinod Chandra Menon is TIEMS Regional Director for Asia

Vinod  is an alumnus of Kerala University, Thiruvananthapuram and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has over 37 years of working experience, of which more than two and a half decades have been in the fields of disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation and public policy analysis. He has worked as Professor (Disaster Management) in Yeshwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration (YASHADA) Pune, the Government of Maharashtra’s apex training institute for senior administrators and has worked in charge of emergency preparedness and response in the UNICEF India Country Office in New Delhi.

In 2005, he was nominated by the Prime Minister of India as a Founder Member of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), Government of India, with the status of a Union Minister of State in the Government of India. He worked in this capacity from 28th September 2005 till 27th September 2010. He is on the Governing Boards of several organizations working on resilience building, emergency preparedness and response and is one of the co-founders of Sphere India. He was a Member of the High Powered Committee (HPC) on Disaster Management established by the Government of India in 1999. He is currently a member of the Peer Committee on “Technological Preparedness to Deal with National Disruptions” established by the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE). He is a Senior Advisor & Mentor of the International Institute of Information Technology (ISquareIT), Pune.

PHe is now an Independent Consultant in the fields of Disaster Risk Reduction, Climate Change Adaptation and Public Policy Analysis. He has been a Consultant to UNDP, UNICEF, UN ESCAP, World Bank, Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), Asian Development Bank, Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC), Bangkok, Economist Intelligence Unit and several humanitarian organizations and networks, state governments and the national government. He has been invited to address several international conferences on disaster management and resilience building. He has published extensively and has Co-edited a book on Humanitarian Logistics published by Springer. He is the recipient of the SKOCH Challenger Award 2010 for his contributions in the field of disaster management.

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Thomas V. Robertson is TIEMS Regional Director for North America.

He directs North America operations of TIEMS, where he founded the TIEMS USA local chapter. He participated for TIEMS in the European Union Programs ASSET, which developed improved, participatory approaches to pandemic response, and HERACLES, which developed systems and processes to protect cultural heritage sites from the effects of climate change. He has published and presented numerous papers on risk communication during emergencies, disaster risk reduction, virtual simulation in emergency management, pandemic response, climate change resilience, AI implications for emergency management, and applications of advanced technologies in the US, France, Italy, China, Japan, Belgium, Greece, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, Northern Cyprus, and Korea. He has been visiting faculty at Écoles des Mines d’Ales Master’s program in Disaster Management and Environmental Impact Studies, and he currently serves as an Expert in Small and Medium Enterprises for the European Innovation Council. He is a Senior Life Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.

He is Founder and Principal at Thinking Teams, an international consultancy specializing in harmonizing human and machine intelligence. As a researcher/engineer, he has developed innovations in biological system modeling, pattern recognition, and computer vision, and he is fluent in current deep learning technologies. His practical organizational experience includes leading research labs and aerospace organizations as Chief Scientist, Program Manager, and VP/General Manager. He has also consulted to organizations both inside and outside the technical sector, using his Organizational Alignment Model.

He earned BS, MS, and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University, where he did research in bioengineering, communications, artificial intelligence, and remote sensing. He was Member of the Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories, Director of the Advanced Information Sciences Division at The Analytical Sciences Corporation, Director of Engineering and Chief Scientist of Lockheed Martin Advanced Simulation Center, and Vice President and General Manager of Atlantic Aerospace Electronics Corporation. In these positions he performed and managed research and development in telecommunications, signal and image processing, advanced computing, artificial intelligence, computer graphics, and simulation.

Craig Hansen is TIEMS Regional Director for Australia, New Zealand and Oceania.

Dr Craig Hansen lives in New Zealand and is the founder and President of the University of Applied Research & Development. With a large and highly qualified facility, he has developed a range of higher education qualifications in emergency response & risk management that are recognised internationally. 

Craig has coauthored a range of emergency management focused articles and is an active supervisor for of both undergraduate and graduate-level research focused on the practices of emergency managers in global contexts.

Craig's PhD is from the University of Auckland, New Zealand where he lives with his family and regularly hosts American military veterans who are interested in using their skills and experiences to respond to global disasters. 

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Roman Tandlich is TIEMS Regional Director for Africa.

Roman Tandlich, has been working in the field of emergency and disaater management since 2011. With background in biotechnology, Dr. Tandlich got involved in the development of low-cost and decentralised sanitation technologies. During the rollout of one such technology, policy and technical skills shortages at local government level. This resulted in the shift of focus of Dr. Tandlich's research towards disaster management approaches towards shift action to address water, sanitation and hygiene challenges in developing countries. This has led to the development of new teaching and research tools to deal with public health, disaster risk reduction and Development. 

Roman is originally from Slovakia where he completed his education up to Masters level. This occurred in 1998 and his background was originally in Biotechnology. He then continued on to complete his PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences at North Dakota State University in Fargo, USA. After two postdoctoral fellowships, Roman joined the Faculty of Pharmacy at Rhodes University in South Africa in 2008. He has been with the same department since then and has recently been promoted there to the rank of Associate Professor. He has expertise in public health, water and sanitation and Disaster ethics

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Alonso Brenes Torres is TIEMS Regional Director for Latin America and Caribbean (LAC)

He is a Costa Rican geographer. He is international consultant and lecturer on disaster risk management, climate sciences, and territorial development, with experience in more than 30 countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

He started his academic and professional career around 20 years ago, working on international cooperation projects related to management of international basins in Central America and Mexico. Since 2005 he has been working on disaster risk management initiatives, territorial development, and climate action.

Currently, he is the coordinator of the Network of Social Studies on Disasters Prevention in Latin America (LA RED). He is also a member of the Integrated Research on Disaster Reduction committee, of the International Council of Science; member of the steering committee on disaster risk reduction of the ICS – ROLAC, and the UNESCO’s Group of Experts on Risk Management for Latin America and the Caribbean; the Science and Technology Advisory Group for the Americas on DRM; and the editorial board of Disaster Prevention and Management Journal.

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