Media Room
NSF NHERI Hurricane and Windstorm Experts List
Research engineers from the NSF-supported Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) are available to discuss issues related to hurricanes, wind storms, and related flooding.
Experts List Categories
- Storm damage to buildings, damage mitigation resilient construction materials, full-scale hurricane wind testing
- Field experiments in landfalling hurricanes
- Instrumentation for hurricane data collection
- Storm surge and wave impact on coastal communities
- NSF-supported reconnaissance teams for post-hurricane data collection
Storm damage to buildings, damage mitigation, resilient construction materials, full-scale hurricane wind testing
Jennifer Bridge, University of Florida, is principal investigator for the NHERI University of Florida Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel. Bridge has expertise physical wind tunnel testing and computational wind engineering. She can discuss smart sensor networks for structural health monitoring (SHM), full-scale bridge testing and evaluation, damage detection, and efforts to improve structural sustainability through advanced monitoring and control.
Email: jennifer.bridge@essie.ufl.edu
Phone: 352-294-7793
Arindam Chowdhury, Florida International University, is principal investigator for the NHERI Wall of Wind laboratory, a world-class wind tunnel located at Florida international University in Miami. A wind engineer, Chowdhury tests the effect of hurricane-force winds and rain on buildings and construction materials at the WOW, where full-scale houses can be tested in with wind speeds up to 157 MPH, in conditions that closely resemble those of a Category 4 hurricane. Chowdhury also directs the Wind Engineering Research lab at FIU.
Email: Arindam.Chowdhury@fiu.edu
Phone: 305-348-0518
Field experiments in landfalling hurricanes
Forest Masters, University of Florida, leads teams into hurricane landfall zones and sets up live experiments to collect data on damaging winds, wind-driven rain and structural loading. In the laboratory, Masters conducts research on full-scale building systems subjected to realistic simulations of fluctuating wind load and rain conditions to evaluate their performance.
Email: masters@eng.ufl.edu
Phone: 352-392-6000
Brian Philips, University of Florida, is principal investigator for the NSF-funded Sentinel project. Phillips and his team installed the first ever Sentinel mobile weather station at Cedar Key Beach (Big Bend area) prior to Hurricane Helene landfall. This weather station collected data on wind, storm surge, waves and water quality. Phillips has expertise in mobile data collection, structural dynamics, experimental methods, optimization, protective systems, wind engineering, and earthquake engineering.
Email: brian.phillips@essie.ufl.edu
Instrumentation for hurricane data collection
Joe Wartman, University of Washington, is principal investigator for the NHERI Natural Hazards reconnaissance facility, also known as the RAPID. Based at the University of Washington, the RAPID facility provides investigators with equipment, software and support services needed to collect, process and analyze perishable data from natural hazard events, including hurricanes, windstorms, and floods. For Hurricane Helene (2024), the RAPID did a major pre-deployment in support of NEER; the RAPID Z-boat is also deployed to Florida for post-event reconnaissance.
Email: uwrapid@uw.edu
Phone: 206-616-3318
Storm surge and wave impact on coastal communities
Daniel Cox, Oregon State University, is principal investigator for the NHERI at OH Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory. Cox uses physical and numerical models to study the effects of surge and wave damage to coastal communities. He studies flood hazards and their impacts, debris, sediment scour and erosion, and he also explores how natural systems, such as mangroves and dunes, can be engineered to mitigate the effects of coastal surge and waves. He has conducted multiple disaster reconnaissance studies, and he serves as chair of two committees for the American Society of Civil Engineers for flood loads and flood resistant design standards.
Email: dan.cox@oregonstate.edu
Phone: 541-737-3631
Clint Dawson, University of Texas, Austin, models and simulates the coastal ocean with applications in hurricane storm surge, tsunamis, and environmental hazards such as oil spills. Using ADCIRC, He runs forecast models while hurricanes are approaching land, and he performs forensic studies to quantify the impacts of coastal disasters. He utilizes high-performance computing methods, big data, and scientific computing algorithms.
Email: clint@ices.utexas.edu
Phone: 512-475-8627
Nina Stark, University of Florida, is faculty lead in UF’s coastal and marine geotechnics research group and an active field researcher. In preparation for Hurricane Helene (2024), Stark led the UF’s Nearshore Extreme Events Reconnaissance team, NEER, that deployed dozens of sensors along Florida’s Big Bend coastline; after the storm, she led the first scouts into the damaged areas for Florida Building Code officials. Previously, Stark co-led GEER reconnaissance missions in response to Harvey and Irma in 2017, the Western European floods in 2021, and the Yellowstone Flood in 2023. She participated in data collection for Idalia 2023.
Email: nina.stark@essie.ufl.edu
X: @NinaStark18
NSF-supported reconnaissance teams for post-hurricane data collection
Ethical practices in post-event research, evacuation and population displacement, social impacts and socially marginalized populations, long-term recovery
Lori Peek, principal investigator, University of Colorado Boulder
Email: lori.peek@colorado.edu
Phone: 303-492-9061
Nearshore Extreme Events Reconnaissance (NEER) Network
NEER’s interdisciplinary teams conduct rapid, pre-storm site characterization and instrument deployments to collect perishable data needed to address key hypotheses about storm impacts on coastal areas, including interactions and feedbacks between the natural and built environments and human actions and reactions.
Britt Raubenheimer, NEER principal investigator, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute
Email: braubenheimer@whoi.edu
@brittraubenheimer.bsky.social
Public Health Extreme Event Research (PHEER) Network
Location-based data operations group that can rapidly carry out geospatial analyses of extreme event impacts, including aggregate cell phone data, social media data, Point of Interest (POI) data, and satellite data.
PHEER Principal Investigators:
David Abramson, New York University
Email: david.abramson@nyu.edu
Jennifer Horney, University of Delaware
Email: horney@udel.edu
David Eisenman, UCLA
Email: DEisenman@mednet.ucla.edu
Nicole Errett, University of Washington
Email: nerrett@uw.edu
Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) Association
Geotechnical and inland flooding
David Frost, principal investigator, Georgia Tech
Email: david.frost@ce.gatech.edu
Phone: 912-339-0196
Structural Extreme Events Reconnaissance (StEER) Network
After extreme events such as hurricanes, the NSF-funded StEER network has a mandate to collect perishable data swiftly and systematically in order to inform the natural hazards research community's continued study of a disaster. StEER builds societal resilience by generating new knowledge on the performance of the built environment through impactful post-disaster reconnaissance disseminated to affected communities.
David Prevatt, University of Florida, StEER associate director for wind hazards
Email: dprev@ufl.edu
Phone: 352-294-7798
Tracy Kijewski-Correa, StEER director, Notre Dame University
Email: tkijewsk@nd.edu
Phone: 574-220-3679