Maarten van Aalst is Director General and Chief Scientist of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI)'s Permanent Representative of the Netherlands at the WMO, ECMWF and EUMETSAT. He is professor of Climate and Disaster Resilience at the University of Twente's Faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation (ITC). Prof van Aalst is a member of the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change and was Coordinating Lead Author at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (AR6, AR5, SREX). He is a Trustee at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). He previously led the International Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre and held the Prinses Margriet Chair in Climate and Disaster Resilience at ITC. He was adjoint Senior Research Scientist at Columbia University in New York, and worked on climate risk management with, among others, the World Bank, the African Development Bank, UNDP and OECD. He served on advisory bodies of UNFCCC, UNDRR, and the UN Secretary General's climate team. Prof van Aalst holds a PhD in atmospheric science from Utrecht University and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz.