Eric Rasmussen, MD, MDM, FACP
Dr. Rasmussen is a medical doctor and the CEO for Infinitum Humanitarian Systems (IHS), a private sector social business built on a profit-for-purpose model. By training he is an internal medicine physician with both undergraduate and medical degrees from Stanford University and a Masters degree in disaster medicine from the UN World Health Organization’s affiliate CEMEC (Centre European pour la Medecin des Catastrophes) in Italy. He was elected a Fellow of the American College of Physicians in 1997 and a Fellow of the Explorer's Club in 2014.
Rasmussen is a Research Professor in Environmental Security and Global Medicine at San Diego State University and an instructor in disaster medicine at both the International Disaster Academy in Bonn, Germany (Bundesamt für Bevölkerungsschutz ind Katastrophenhilfe) and the Institute for Disaster Preparedness in Beijing, China.
He is a member of the core faculty at Singularity University within the NASA Ames Research Center, teaching in both the Exponential Medicine and Global Grand Challenges tracks. He is also an elected member of the Pacific Council on International Policy and he serves as Permanent Advisor to the UN Secretary-General’s High Level Expert Panel on Water Disasters. He is a past member of the US National Academy of Science’s Committee on Grand Challenges in Global Development and continues to advise several governments on issues around science and technology for development.
Rasmussen served as a physician in the US Navy for 25 years aboard nuclear submarines, amphibious ships and aircraft carriers. He was Fleet Surgeon for the US Navy's Third Fleet and chairman of an academic department of medicine in Seattle. Among his wartime deployments are Bosnia (x3), Afghanistan (x2), and Iraq for ten months. His disaster deployments include Supertyphoon Haiyan in the Philippines, Haiti's earthquake, Banda Aceh for the tsunami, New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and the 2015 earthquake in Nepal.
Rasmussen also spent nine years as a Principal Investigator in humanitarian informatics for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In 2003 he received DARPA's capstone award as Outstanding Investigator of the Year. In 2007 he retired from the Navy to serve as the CEO of InSTEDD, a humanitarian NGO founded by Dr. Larry Brilliant at Google.org. InSTEDD's charter is to put into action the goals outlined by Dr. Brilliant's TED Prize speech calling for better global disease outbreak surveillance and response.
Eric is a Combat-Service-Disabled Veteran and the majority owner of IHS in addition to serving as CEO. As a consequence IHS is formally registered as a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business. He lives with Demi, his wife of more than 30 years, on Bainbridge Island near Seattle, Washington.