He has more than 20 years of experience in environmental and disaster management and has advised governments around the world on post-disaster recovery issues.
Dr. Muralee holds a PhD in Environmental Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology. He is an Alumni of the United Nations University and a Beahers fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.
Between 1995-2003, Dr. Muralee was a Corporate Advisor to oil companies in South East Asia and the Middle East, dealing with oil industry-related emergencies. He has handled offshore oil spills, on shore blow outs, oil well fires and clean-up of oil field contamination.
Since joining UNEP’s Post-Conflict and Disaster Management Branch in 2003, he has been involved in responses to the major recent natural disasters of the 21st century, ranging from the South-East Asian Tsunami in 2004 to the 2011 floods in Thailand.
In 2008, following the devastating earthquake in Sichuan, China, Dr. Muralee coordinated a series of training and capacity building events for national officials on disaster waste management. In 2010, Dr. Muralee was deployed to Haiti to help deal with the massive volumes of disaster debris generated by another major earthquake, and the associated collapse of waste management infrastructure and systems.
Dr.Muralee led UNEP’s International Expert Team to Japan to coincide with the first anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2012. In May 2011, he was part of a team of international experts who were invited to Japan by the Asia Disaster Preparedness Center to join a field visit to the tsunami-impacted areas.
He is the author of several publications in International Academic Journals of which one was awarded the best paper by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1996.