Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Dr. Ciottone is President Emeritus of the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine (WADEM) and an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is an Instructor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH), and the Founding Director of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Fellowship in Disaster Medicine, where he has trained over 120 postdoctoral fellows. Dr. Ciottone also serves as the Director of Medical Preparedness for the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative at Harvard University and is a Fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians, the International Board of Disaster Medicine, and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.

Dr. Ciottone was Commander of DMAT Massachusetts-2 when it was one of the first federal disaster teams deployed into Ground Zero responding to the 9/11 attacks. He was a Founding Member of the US Department of Homeland Security and was a consultant to the White House Medical Unit for three administrations.

Early in his career, Dr. Ciottone worked with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Geneva Switzerland and the Radiation Emergency Assistance Center/Training Site (REAC/TS) in Oakridge Tennessee to implement a nuclear accident preparedness program for Eastern Europe. He also served as a Fellowship Director for the IAEA, and his triage and treatment algorithm for chemical weapons attacks, published as a sole author article in the New England Journal of Medicine, is being used extensively around the world.

Dr. Ciottone has published over 150 peer-reviewed journal articles and serves as founding Editor-in-Chief of his textbook Ciottone’s Disaster Medicine, now in its 3rd edition. He has given over 200 national and international conference presentations, including 41 Keynote Addresses. In 2017, Dr Ciottone was recognized by the Physician to the President for “Outstanding Achievement in Support of the White House Medical Unit and the President of the United States”. He is the 2018 recipient of the American College of Emergency Physicians Disaster Medical Sciences Award, and the 2020 recipient of the American Academy of Disaster Medicine Distinguished Service Award. In 2024, Dr Ciottone was awarded a Doctor Honoris Causa for his work in Disaster Medicine from Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier in France.