“Responding to modern day disasters requires modern technologies and methodologies.”

Over the past 2 years, we have laid the foundations for a new interdisciplinary initiative at Stanford, which focuses on disaster management, more specifically post-disaster response and relief.  Our definition of disaster is broad and entails natural disasters, man-made disasters (i.e., bioterrorism and war), and disasters caused by evolving pathogenic organisms (i.e., pandemics). As these disasters have a tremendous impact on our environment and its inhabitants, more structured and intelligent response strategies need to be developed. To this date, students and fellows have generally had little exposure to the challenges of post-disaster response and relief. Program in Disaster Management (PDM) is designed to provide an unparalleled interdisciplinary education environment, in which current students and future leaders learn how to function effectively in their respective field should they assume real-world responsibilities in disaster situations.

 

Our program is balanced on two arms: Technology and Methodology.

"Interdisciplinary skills and backgrounds forge new opportunities." Dean Pizzo

The initial structure of this program was devised after we conducted student focus groups at every major department at Stanford. This is why our program relies heavily on interdepartmental collaboration and has an intrinsic multidisciplinary design. More »