Gordon Woo

Biography

Dr. Gordon Woo is an internationally recognized expert on risk management, with a particular focus on catastrophe risks. Newsweek magazine described him as one of the world’s leading catastrophists. He has thirty years of experience in catastrophe risk consultancy, advising financial institutions, governments and major corporations. His work on the safety and security of major facilities covers perils ranging from natural hazards to terrorism, fire and explosion. He has undertaken seismic hazard and terrorism assessments for most countries in the world, as well as
volcano, windstorm and flood hazard assessments for many territories.

In 2004, he was named by Treasury and Risk magazine as one of the hundred most influential people in finance. As a noted expert in many fields of disaster management, he has served on the Blackett Committee reviewing Black Swan events for the UK government chief scientist. In April 2009, he participated as a risk specialist in the Singapore Island Forum, organized on behalf of the Singapore government, focusing on cyber risks. Over the past eight years, he has been regularly invited to lecture at the NATO Centre of Excellence for the Defence against Terrorism in Turkey. In October 2017, his pioneering work on counterfactual risk analysis was featured in the Economist magazine.

Dr. Woo graduated from Cambridge University as the top mathematician of his year. He completed his PhD at MIT as a Kennedy Scholar, and was a member of the Harvard Society of Fellows. He is a visiting professor at UCL, and an adjunct professor at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

He is the author of the books, The Mathematics of Natural Catastrophes, and Calculating Catastrophe, published by Imperial College Press.

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