Dr Pal is an Assocaite Professor and Chair of the Disaster Preparedness, Mitigation and Management academic programme at the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand. He has served as a faculty member at the Centre for Disaster Management, Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, India. He holds a doctoral and two master’s degrees (in applied geology and sociology with a specialization in urban sociology). He has over 16 years of experience in research, teaching, training, advocacy, and consultancy (primarily focused on disaster governance, risk management, incident command system, disaster risk reduction, hazard and risk assessment, risk perceptions, participatory disaster risk management (DRM), public health risk, GIS and remote sensing in DRM, climate change adaptation, and disaster risk management). Dr Pal supervises doctoral and masters’ research students across Asia and Africa in the fields of disaster risk management and governance. He regularly contributes to close to a dozen international journals as a reviewer and has published books and research articles in refereed national and international journals. He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Global Alliance of Disaster Research Institutes, Japan.