Lee Clarke, Ph.D., is an internationally known expert on disasters and organizational and technological failures. He is the author of Mission Improbable and Worst Cases, both from the University of Chicago Press. He is the editor of a Research in Social Problems and Public Policy volume titled Terrorism and Disaster: New Threats, New Ideas, published in 2003.

Clarke has published widely on the Y2K problem, risk communication, panic, civil defense, evacuation, community response to disaster, organizational failure, and near-earth objects (asteroids and comets that come close to the earth). He has written for or been featured in the Atlantic Monthly, Boston Globe, Washington Post, New York Daily News, New York Times, and Harvard Business Review. Most recently, he appeared on NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, ABC's World News Tonight, and KUCI, an affiliate of National Public Radio,

Clarke served on a National Academy of Sciences committee that published a report on "Reopening Public Facilities after a Biological Attack: A Decision-Making Framework" in June 2005. In Spring 2007, he was the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University.