Prof. Santosh Kumar is an expert with 30 years of experience in the Development Planning and Disaster Risk Reduction Sector. He has received professional training in Disaster risk Management from Israel, backed with International work exposure at The World Bank and the Inter-governmental body of SAARC. Currently the CEO of the International Institute of Security and Safety Management, he is a former executive director of the National Institute of Disaster Management. He has worked at state levels in different capacities in UP Academy of Administration, Nainital and Rajasthan Institute of Public Administration, Jaipur. He was also serving as the Senior Advisor to the National Institute of Disaster Management.

He is a development economist, trained in disaster risk reduction, climate adaptation and capacity development with more than three decades of combined experience in institution building, public policy and Governance. His experience of working with UN organizations lead in changing the priorities of the government policies and programmes of the state and national governments especially in the area of disaster risk reduction, climate adaptation, building regional response mechanism, post-disaster damage and need assessment system, building back better recovery framework.

Prof Kumar has developed and designed new curriculum, first ever in the country, for graduate and post graduate programme on disaster risk reduction and climate change to be taught in Indian Universities which got duly endorsed and approved by the University Grant commission, India and circulated to all the universities for its implementation. He has set up an Indian Universities and Institutions network for promoting disaster and climate research, knowledge development and innovations. He is the founder director of this network. He has also setup and unique Centre – Child Centric Disaster Management Centre at the National Institute of Disaster Management.