Ma. Laurice Jamero leads the Resilience Collaboratory at the Manila Observatory, where she works closely with local governments across the Philippines to support their climate and disaster risk management, and adaptation efforts. She is a chapter scientist and contributing author of the Atlas Chapter of AR6-WGI, and a working group member of the Southeast Asia Science Advisory Network.

Lau earned her PhD degree in Sustainability Science in 2018 at The University of Tokyo, where she studied about climate change adaptation in small island communities in the Philippines. She has published scientific articles on the topic, where she examined various adaptation strategies (retreat, community-based, nature-based, and coastal engineering), distinguished effective from maladaptive practices, and explored why different small island communities adapt the way they do and the potential limits to adaptation.

Lau is passionate about highlighting the resilience demonstrated by island and coastal communities throughout history, and focusing on how we can build on their existing adaptive capacities in order to reduce the adverse impacts of climate change.