Faculty Directory

OFFICE HOURS (Fall 2026)

• Thursdays, 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM (in office)
• By appointment

Climate change, underinvestment, and poor policy and planning is challenging the reliability of US infrastructure. While the effects are felt broadly – from sustained power outages to flooded roads to prolonged school closures – the impacts are uneven. I mentor a team of engineering graduate researchers, and together, we produce evidence-based research on effective infrastructure policy and engineering design that results in less risk in the built environment. I was initially trained in network theory and operations research, and over the past decade and a half, I have incorporated elements of data science, signal processing, and risk science into my work. 

My research is highly interdisciplinary and deeply collaborative. As an example, I lead a team of coastal hydrologists, economists, public health experts, and microbiologists on identifying effective policy for reducing the risk of failing septic systems in areas prone to sea-level rise in Maryland. By partnering with a housing and sanitation non-profit, our work has identified where to target resources for pumping and has provided light on the delicate balance between investing in sewer expansion while not codifying growth in high-hazard areas. I also lead a small team of researchers focused on the potential benefits of rebuilding housing more sustainably after disasters. Through a DOE grant and using the lens of Houston, TX, a graduate student and I have computationally recreated the thermal efficiency and energy properties of the housing stock. With the support of flood hazard modelers, we have quantified how adopting modern energy conservation code during the rebuilding phases of disasters could reduce peak energy demand by 2-3% - enough at times to stave off brownouts during temperature extremes. This has led to a large project in partnership with the American Red Cross and funded by the Sloan Foundation for testing energy efficiency inventions at scale during the disaster rebuilding process. 

I am also a scholar in the field of U.S. disaster policy, particularly in terms of how the U.S. uses disaster and mitigation funds to invest in infrastructure. My work has repeatedly exposed instances of how disaster policy favors high-capacity, high-income communities, and demonstrated how this leads to more reliable infrastructure in these areas - further widening the gulf among the economic strata in the U.S. More recently, I have teamed with economists, lawyers, and experts in public administration to envision how disaster policy could be designed to work for everyone. 



 

I am the recipient of a 2022 NSF CAREER Award, and a 2019 National Academy of Science Gulf Coast Research Early-Career Fellowship. I am currently an associate editor in the area of risk and resilience for the ASCE Journal of Infrastructure Systems, for Decision Analysis (INFORMS), and for the International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters. I am also an editorial boardmember for the journals Risk Analysis and Decision Analysis. I was a research fellow at the University of Michigan and a post-doctoral researcher at Johns Hopkins University and was a research analyst for a federally-funded research and development center in support of the Department of Homeland Security. I hold an MS and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Cornell University and a BS in Civil Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. 

• ENCE 302 Probability and Statistics for Civil and Environmental Engineers
• ENCE 430/632 Resilience of Infrastructure Systems