Dr. Eric Rasmussen

Eric Rasmussen, M.D., MDM, FACP is VP, Humanitarian Systems, AccessAgility and Research Professor, Environmental Security and Global Medicine, San Diego State University. He was recently CEO & Managing Director, InSTEDD (Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disasters), an international nonprofit organization founded by Google.org and dedicated to delivering innovative technological support to those who help the world stay safe.
 
Prior to accepting this position Eric was both Chairman of the Department of Medicine within Naval Hospital Bremerton near Seattle, Washington, and an advisor in humanitarian informatics for the US Office of the Secretary of Defense. 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 is a Reviewer for the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the American Journal of Public Health and sits on several advisory boards, including the Crisis Management Resources Board for the National Academy of Sciences. He has a number of publications and has been awarded several personal, unit, and theater military decorations, including a Presidential Legion of Merit.
 
Eric spent seven years enlisted in nuclear submarines before leaving the Navy to receive his undergraduate and medical degrees from Stanford University. After graduate work in molecular biology at Los Alamos National Laboratory and teaching in Haiti, he completed a Residency in Internal Medicine and re-entered the Navy as Chief Resident in Medicine at the Navy Medical Center in Oakland, California. Subsequent Navy positions included three years as Fleet Surgeon for the US Navy’s Third Fleet.
 
Eric, with an additional European Master’s Degree in Disaster Medicine, served on the Afghanistan humanitarian support planning staff within US Central Command Headquarters (CENTCOM) in 2002, and later as a physician to the Iraq Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) for the Iraq War in 2002–2003. As a member of the DART, he served within the International Humanitarian Operations Center in Kuwait and was later selected for the DARPA 2003 “Sustained Excellence in a Principal Investigator” award.
 
Further work as Director of the Strong Angel series of international humanitarian support demonstrations led to work in Afghanistan in 2004 and 2007, and in Indonesia as head of a Civil-Military Coordination Team for the tsunami response in Banda Aceh in early 2005. Later in 2005, he deployed with Joint Task Force Katrina in New Orleans, coordinating a small portion of the relief response after Hurricane Katrina.
 
Eric also 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. He also serves as InSTEDD’s representative to the Clinton Global Initiative.
 
Eric has been married for more than 20 years to Demi, and has daughters Melissa and Faith. He divides his time between Palo Alto and a small ranch near Olympic National Park in western Washington.
 
Watch Eric Rasmussen issues on the Earth, High-tech Support for Emergency Responders, and Agile Technology with Lives at Stake: InSTEDD in Haiti & Beyond. Read his LinkedIn profile and his TED profile. Follow his Twitter feed.