BIOGRAPHY: Jonathan Sury is the Project Director for Communications and Field Operations at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness. He holds a master of public health degree in Environmental Health Sciences with a concentration in Environment and Molecular Epidemiology from the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. He has a keen interest in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and their use in disaster preparedness and recovery. Presently, he contributes to a variety of disaster-related research at NCDP, including community resilience and child-focused preparedness, evaluating the unanticipated consequences of pandemic flu, determining racially and ethnically appropriate emergency messaging, analyzing the long-term disaster resiliency and recovery issues in the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina, and the measurement and mapping of social vulnerability and the role of place and space in disaster recovery. He is currently a doctoral student in Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University.