Bill McGuire is an academic, science writer and broadcaster. He is currently Professor of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London and from 1997 to 2010 was Director of the university's Aon Benfield UCL Hazard Centre. A volcanologist by inclination and training, he has worked on volcanoes all over the world, and published over three hundred papers, books and articles on volcanoes and other natural hazards. Bill has held the positions of UK National Correspondent of the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior, and Secretary of the UK Panel of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics. He has been a council member of the Geological Society and in 1996 was Senior Scientist at the Montserrat Volcano Observatory. He is a Fellow of the Royal Institution (RI) and a member of the RI’s Science Media Centre Advisory Group. He is currently on the editorial boards of two journals: Disasters and Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Bill was also a member of the Natural Hazard Working Group established by the UK Government in January 2005, in the wake of the Indian Ocean tsunami, to examine the feasibility of global natural hazard early warning systems. In November 2005, he gave the prestigious Natural History Museum Annual Science Lecture. He was a member of the Lancet-UCL Commission on the Health Effects of Climate Change and is an advisor on natural threats and climate change to HSBC Group. In 2010, he was a member of the Science Advisory Group in Emergencies (SAGE), advising the UK government on the Icelandic volcanic ash problem and was an author of the 2011 IPCC report on climate change and extreme events. He is an advisory board member of the Contraction & Convergence Foundation. Bill’s Who’s Who entry lists ‘worrying about the future of our planet’ amongst his hobbies and interests.
Bill lives in the Peak District with his wife Anna, sons Fraser (8) and Jake (3), and cats – Driftwood, Dave and Toby.