Bio

“My mission is to bridge the
Humanitarian & Technology communities.”

Patrick Meier (PhD) is an internationally recognized thought leader on the application of new technologies for crisis early warning, humanitarian response and resilience. He presently serves as Director of Innovation at the Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), member of the Qatar Foundation, where he develops Next Generation Humanitarian Technologies by leveraging Big Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Social Computing.

Prior to QCRI, Patrick co-founded and co-directed the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative’s (HHI) Program on Crisis Mapping & Early Warning. He served as Director of Crisis Mapping at Ushahidi & co-founded CrisisMappers, Digital Humanitarians and the award-winning Standby Task Force. Patrick has consulted extensively for many international organizations and programs including the UN Secretariat, UN Global Pulse, OCHA, UNDP, UNICEF, OSCE, OECD, EC, USAID, DAI, IFES, Swisspeace, Internews and the World Bank. In addition, Patrick is a National Geographic Emerging Explorer, a member of the Academy of Achievement (AoA) and a lead contributor to PeaceTXT with PopTech & partners. In 2010, he was publicly praised by President Bill Clinton for his digital humanitarian efforts. Patrick is also an accomplished speaker, having given talks at the White House, UN, Google, Harvard, Stanford and MIT. He has presented at major international conferences including the Skoll World Forum, Club de Madrid, Mobile World Congress, PopTech, Where 2.0, TTI/Vanguard, SXSW & several TEDx’s. He has been interviewed by the media including the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, The Economist, Al-Jazeera, CNN & NPR. Patrick is also a distinguished scholar, holding a PhD from The Fletcher School, a Pre-Doctoral Fellowship from Stanford University and an MA from Columbia University. In addition, he was a Research Fellow at the Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO) and holds an advanced certificate in complexity science from the Santa Fe Institute (SFI). Patrick has given numerous guest lectures and has taught several professional, graduate and undergraduate courses. He is also a talented photographer (see below) and a noted author. He writes the widely respected iRevolution blog (which has received over 1 million hits) and tweets at @patrickmeier. Patrick is also in the top 1% of the most viewed LinkedIn profiles. Full CV available here.

Short Bio: Patrick Meier (PhD) is an internationally recognized thought leader on the application of new technologies for positive social change. He serves as Director of Social Innovation at the Qatar Foundation’s Computing Research Institute (QCRI) where he develops next-generation humanitarian technologies. He previously co-founded and co-directed Harvard’s Program on Crisis Mapping & Early Warning and served as Director of Crisis Mapping at Ushahidi. Patrick co-founded CrisisMappers, Digital Humanitarians & Standby Task Force. He is an accomplished speaker, writes at iRevolution and tweets at @patrickmeier.

Patrick’s photography: All images below are copyrighted by Patrick Meier. They may be used freely for non-commercial purposes only and only if they are clearly credited to Patrick Meier and linked to iRevolution.net.