The 2025 DRU National Summit features higher education leaders and practitioners from across the country. Learn more about the 2025 summit speakers and panelists below.
André Le Duc | Zoltan Varga | April Freeman | Krista Dillon | Amina Assefa | Ellen Peters
André Le Duc
Disaster Resilient Universities Network Found and Administrator
University of Oregon - Vice President and Chief Resilience Officer, Division of Safety and Risk Services
André Le Duc's focus in both his career and academic research is on developing organizational resilience. Mr. Le Duc is the University of Oregon's first chief resilience officer and vice president for Safety and Risk Services. The Safety and Risk Services division provides leadership and expertise to the UO community on business continuity, emergency management, environmental health and safety, enterprise risk management, geographic information services and campus mapping, public safety and law enforcement, and risk management.
Before working as a senior administrator for the University of Oregon, Mr. Le Duc served as the founding and executive director of the Oregon Partnership for Disaster Resilience (OPDR), an applied research center and coalition of public, private, and professional organizations working toward the mission of creating a disaster resilient state. OPDR is nationally recognized by the Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) and Public Entity Risk Institute (PERI). In 2005, Mr. Le Duc established the National Disaster Resilient Universities (DRU) Network, with over 2200 members covering an estimated 900 higher education institutions.
Zoltan Varga
University of Oregon - Director, Zebrafish International Resource Center
Zoltan Varga is the director of the Zebrafish International Resource Center (ZIRC) at the University of Oregon. Since joining ZIRC in 2004, Varga has focused on advancing cryobanking and reproductive technologies to support the research community and streamline operations. ZIRC operations rely heavily on the efficient and effective management and distribution of thousands of genetic modifications. Varga's work has enabled ZIRC to cryopreserve over 46,800 genetic modifications which are now available to researchers worldwide via ZIRC's online repository.
April Freeman
University of Oregon - Facility Manager, Zebrafish International Resource Center
April Freeman serves as the facility manager at the University of Oregon's Zebrafish International Resource Center (ZIRC). During her tenure, she has facilitated the import of more than 46,000 zebrafish strains, supporting ZIRC’s mission as a global repository and distribution hub. In addition to coordinating fish imports, April actively consults with the research community on zebrafish health and husbandry practices. She is also responsible for the daily management of staff, ensures compliance with animal welfare standards in collaboration with the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), and oversees building, lab safety, and maintenance operations.
Krista Dillon
University of Oregon - Chief of Staff and Senior Director of Operations, Division of Safety and Risk Services
Krista Dillon currently serves as the chief of staff and senior director of operations for Safety and Risk Services at the University of Oregon. In her role, she manages the Emergency Management and Continuity program as well as a number of interdepartmental teams including the Incident Management Team, Campus Vulnerability Assessment Team, and Behavioral Evaluation and Threat Assessment Team, and Demonstration Team. Ms. Dillon has held several roles within the Emergency Management program at the University of Oregon since 2004. Ms. Dillon is a former current chair of the International Association of Emergency Manager's Universities and Colleges Caucus. Ms. Dillon serves as both an Incident Commander and a Planning Section Chief on the University of Oregon's Incident Management Team. Ms. Dillon has a master of community and regional planning from the University of Oregon.
Amina Assefa
University of California - Director, Emergency Management and Business Continuity
Amina Assefa is the systemwide Director of Emergency Management and Business Continuity at the University of California (UC), Office of the President. In her role, she is responsible for coordinating with UC locations on all aspects of resiliency planning. Prior to this role, she served as the UC Center of Excellence in Readiness for three years and managed UC Berkeley's Office of Emergency Management for seven years. She has 18 years of experience in emergency management, business continuity, and health and medical disaster operations. She serves on the California Earthquake Early Warning Advisory Board as the UC President's designee. Amina came to the UC from the New York City Office of Emergency Management where she helped the city prepare for and respond to multiple emergencies including hurricanes, heat waves, blizzards, and tornados. She also responded to Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike while working in Louisiana. Amina graduated from Mills College and has a Master of Public Health degree from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
Ellen Peters
University of Oregon - Director, Center for Science Communication Research and Philip H. Knight Chair and Professor
Dr. Ellen Peters is Philip H. Knight Chair and Director of the Center for Science Communication Research at the University of Oregon where she holds joint appointments in the School of Journalism and Communication and the Psychology Department. She studies the basic building blocks of human judgment and decision making and their links with effective risk communication. She has published more than 190 peer-reviewed papers in outlets such as PNAS, JAMA, NEJM, Annual Review of Public Health, Psychological Science, and Nature Climate Change. She also authored the book Innumeracy in the Wild: Misunderstanding and Misusing Numbers, published by Oxford University Press.
She is former President of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Association for Psychological Science (APS), the American Psychological Association (APA), the Society for Experimental Social Psychology (SESP), and the Society for Behavioral Medicine. She has worked extensively with federal agencies to advance decision and communication sciences in health and health policy, including being Chair of FDA’s Risk Communication Advisory Committee and member of the NAS’s Science of Science Communication committee. She has received an NIH Group Merit Award and was the first American to win the Jane Beattie Scientific Recognition Award. She has received extensive funding from the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health.