Peter Sammonds is a Professor of Geophysics at UCL and the Director of the UCL Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction. Peter has extensive experience in research and knowledge exchange round natural hazard risks, disasters and recovery. He has advised UK research councils on the increasing resilience to natural hazards programme and has multiple funded projects: Increasing Resilience to Environmental Hazards in Border Conflict Zones (funded by NERC), Resilient Futures for the Rohingya Refugees (Royal Society), Rohingya Journeys of Violence and Resilience (British Academy) and the Rohingya Exodus: Issues and Implications for Stability, Security and Peace (British Academy).

Peter has been a member of the EEFIT Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation team and has contributed to inter-disciplinary reports on disasters, which have been taken up widely by government for policy advice. Peter has also been a Commissioner on the UCL-Lancet Commission on Migration and Health, 2017-18, whose report has been influential.