Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Dr. Ciottone is President Emeritus of the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine, 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 100 postdoctoral fellows, many of whom are now in leadership positions in the US and around the world.

Dr. Ciottone also serves as the Director of Medical Preparedness for the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative at Harvard University, a joint program of the HSPH and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and sits on the faculty committee for the Harvard University Scholars at Risk program. He is a Fellow of the International Board of Disaster Medicine, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and the American College of Emergency Physicians.

As a former member of the United States National Disaster Medical System, Dr. Ciottone was Commander of the Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT) Massachusetts-2 when it was one of the first federal teams deployed into Ground Zero responding to the 9/11 attacks. He was a Founding Member of the US Department of Homeland Security and has been a consultant to the White House Medical Unit for the past three administrations.

Dr. Ciottone’s clinical and field experience includes 25 years as a practicing emergency physician and over 500 missions as a flight physician on an aeromedical helicopter service. He has conducted educational programs in more than 30 countries around the world and has served as a disaster response fellowship director for the International Atomic Energy Agency. Dr. Ciottone has written over 150 scholarly works on Disaster Medicine and Emergency Management, including serving as founding Editor-in-Chief of his textbook Ciottone’s Disaster Medicine, now in its 3rd edition and considered the leading textbook in the field.

In 2016, 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 from Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier in France.