Paolo Bazzurro (1962) is professor of Structural Design at University School for Advanced Studies (IUSS) in Pavia.  He earned his M.S., Engineer Degree, and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at Stanford University where he has been part-time Consulting Assistant Professor from 2001 to 2005. Before joining IUSS, he gained more than 25 years of professional experience in Europe and United States dealing with risk assessment of monetary losses caused by natural events for corporate clients, insurance companies, reinsurance companies and brokers, sovereign and local governments and other public institutions. In this period he led projects dealing with the assessment of hazard and risk caused by earthquakes, hurricanes, flood and tsunami to a variety of onshore and off shore structures located in five continents. In this period, he worked for 11 years as a Principal Engineer and Director of Risk Engineering and Analysis at AIR Worldwide where he led the risk assessment work and contributed to the design of the final risk mitigation strategies in ground-breaking projects such as CatMex and MultiCat, which supported the issuance of insured-linked securities and more traditional insurance coverage for the Government of Mexico. He also carried out the risk assessment work for the Pacific Catastrophe Risk Assessment and Financing Initiative in the Pacific Region for the World Bank, which brought to fruition the first insurance facility in that region of the world. Over the years he has also led many research and application-oriented projects for prestigious organizations such as the United States Geological Survey, the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research (PEER) Center, and the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), for which he led the two damage reconnaissance missions after the 2002 Molise and 2009 L’Aquila Earthquakes. From 2009 to 2015 he was the Deputy Chair of the Scientific Board of the Global Earthquake Model (GEM) and members of several others international scientific and editorial boards. From 2013 to 2018 he has been a member of the Seismic section of the Great Risks Committee appointed by the Italian Prime Minister office. He authored more than 150 refereed publications in different engineering areas.