Michele M. Wood holds a doctorate in Community Health Sciences from the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles, with a minor degree in sociology. She also holds a master’s degree in community psychology. Before serving as Department Chair, she taught graduate and undergraduate courses in research methods, statistics, and program design and evaluation. Wood’s major research interest is risk communication for disasters, including preparedness education, imminent threat alerts and warnings, and post-event safety. Wood has served on and participated in multiple committees of the National Academy of Sciences related to mobile alerts and warnings, and she has served as a subject matter expert for multiple agencies, including the U.S. Geologic Survey (USGS), the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, the American Red Cross, the California Office of Emergency Services, the Fire Protection Research Foundation, Earthquake Country Alliance, and the Southern California Earthquake Center. She is currently serving as principal investigator on earthquake early warning research funded by the USGS, “Earthquake Early Warning, IPAWs, and Over-Alerting: Collaborative Research with California State University Fullerton and University at Albany.”