Dr Abhilash Panda
IAS Residential Fellow
United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction
Dr Abhilash Panda is Deputy Chief of the Intergovernmental, Interagency and Partnerships Branch at the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), where he leads global initiatives on financing risk prevention, de-risking investment, resilient infrastructure, and recovery aligned with the Build Back Better agenda. He is also the architect of the Network of Corporate Chief Resilience Officers, a pioneering multi-sector alliance on supply chain resilience.
Over more than 20 years at the United Nations, Dr Panda has held leadership roles across Asia, Europe, and global operations. He created and led the UN Making Cities Resilient Campaign, supporting over 3,000 cities worldwide to build disaster resilience. He spearheaded establishment of the the G20 Disaster Risk Reduction Working Group, which he helped establish, and played a central role in developing ISO 22372:2025 — the first international standard for resilient infrastructure principles. He has also led work on resilience bond, and global taxonomies for adaptation and resilience finance.
Dr Panda holds a PhD from the University of Huddersfield, an MBA, and a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering. He is a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) and has extensive research collaborations with UK institutions including UCL, the University of Huddersfield, Cambridge, and the University of Manchester.
He has co-authored more than a dozen publications on urban resilience, critical infrastructure, cyber security and disaster risk reduction.
During their IAS Fellowship, Dr Panda will be collaborating with Professor Dilanthi Amaratunga from the School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering.