From early 2008, David Bresch has been serving as Head of University Relations to globally coordinate university relations and risk research projects and has been acting as contact point for the Swiss Re sponsored chair in “Integrative Risk Management” at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich (ETHZ).

From 2002 to 2008, David Bresch headed up the Atmospheric Perils Group, comprising of specialists based in Zurich, Armonk (near New York), London, Munich and Hong Kong, . He was responsible for risk analysis and risk management of atmospheric perils, in particular tropical cyclones and European winter storms, both of which number among the most important major claims scenarios in the insurance industry. Due to the susceptibility of these scenarios to climate variability and climate change, his group has been involved in a series of joint studies with leading scientific institutions to quantify possible future financial and societal impacts. He also served as Swiss Re’s chief architect for natural catastrophe risk assessment models and has been member of the deal team for many cat bond (ILS) transactions.

After receiving a Masters in physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich (ETHZ), David completed his PhD at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at the ETHZ on the subject of "The interaction of the ocean and the atmosphere and their influence on storms in the North Atlantic" in 1998 and spent a year at MIT in Boston as research associate in “science and policy of climate change”.