Joseph Ackroyd, P.E., CFM, M.ASCE
Joseph Ackroyd is the Assistant Commissioner of the Technical Affairs and Code Development Units at New York City Department of Buildings (DOB). He also serves as the Floodplain Administrator for the City of New York. In his role as Assistant Commissioner, Joe manages a team that among other things, administers revisions to the New York City Construction Codes, draft code interpretations, local laws, rules and Buildings Bulletins. Previous positions at DOB include Executive Director of Technical Affairs, Chief Engineer of the Concrete Enforcement Unit and Plans Examiner. Joe also serves as a committee member to the International Plumbing Code, ASCE/COPRI Piers and Wharves and ASCE 24 Flood Resistant Design and Construction Standards committees.
Rajagopalan Balaji, Ph.D., M. ASCE
Professor Rajagopalan Balaji is a Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering (CEAE) and a Fellow of Cooperative Institute of Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), at University of Colorado (CU), Boulder, USA. He was the former Chair of the Department (2014 – 2022). Dr. Balaji pursues research in diverse interdisciplinary areas spanning – spatial and temporal modeling of hydro-climatology and extremes, water resources management, Indian summer monsoon, paleoclimate, and stochastic hydrology. In addition, large scale statistical analysis and modeling for applications to water and wastewater quality, construction safety, building energy efficiency and others. He has taught courses in Hydraulics, Hydrology, Water resources systems, Civil Engineering Design, Hydroclimatology and Statistical methods. For his research contributing to improved operations, management and planning of water resources in the semi-arid river basins of Western USA, especially the Colorado River System, Dr. Balaji was a co-recipient of the Partners In Conservation Award from the Department of Interior in 2009. He continues to develop models for flow projections on the river that are being used in the current water management discussions. His joint work on unraveling the mystery of Indian summer monsoon droughts that appeared in Science in 2006 was awarded the prestigious Norber Gerbier Mumm Award from the World Meteorological Organization in 2009. His strong publication record in peer-reviewed journal articles, including in prestigious journals such as, Science, Nature Geoscience and Geophysical Research Letters. He served as associated editor of ASCE Journal of Hydrologic Engineering, Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management and Geophysical Research Letters and currently serves as associate editor of Water Resources Research and Climate Research. He has directed several research projects funded by NSF, NOAA, USBR, EPA and other State and international agencies. He has organized several workshops and conferences on climate extremes and water resources management under changing climate. He was elected, Fellow, American Geophysical Union, in 2019. In 2023 he was awarded the Fulbright-Kalam Climate Fellowship. Both are prestigious honors.
Robert R. (Russ) Cooper, PE, LSS BB
Mr. Cooper is the Navy’s Criteria manager for facilities resiliency and the DOD’s Criteria Working Group Chair for installation resiliency. He is a licensed engineer in Virginia and a certified Lean & Six Sigma Blackbelt. His experience includes 36 years of facilities engineering with expertise in large planning studies, facilities maintenance, ashore logistics operations and leadership of multi-discipline engineering initiatives. His responsibilities include resiliency criteria program management, project management of resiliency studies and criteria, AE oversight and lead for advancement of resiliency in new construction criteria and coverage in assessment of existing facilities. He is currently leading efforts to develop criteria for new critical facilities, to evaluate & improve resiliency in existing facilities and to assess performance and resiliency of our most critical facilities and infrastructure.
Daniel T. (Dan) Cox, Ph.D., M.ASCE
Dr. Cox holds a PhD in Civil Engineering and is currently a professor in School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Oregon State University. Dr. Cox’s research focuses on community resilience to coastal hazards, including tsunami and hurricane surge and waves inundation in the built and natural environments. He conducts research on tsunami and wave impacts on near-coast structures, tsunami evacuation and life safety, sediment transport and erosion, and nature-based solutions for coastal hazards mitigation. He served as director of the Cascadia Lifelines Program, the director of O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory, and his a member of the NIST-supported Center for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning at Colorado State University and member of the DHS-supported Coastal Resilience Center at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. He serves on the council for the Network for Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure program of the National Science Foundation, and he served on Committee on USACE Coastal Risk Reduction for the National Research Council. For the American Society of Civil Engineering, he serves as chair of the ASCE 24 Flood Resistant Design committee, and chair of the ASCE 7 Flood Loads subcommittee, and as secretary of the Coastal Engineering Research Council.
Bruce R. Ellingwood, Ph.D., P.E., NAE, F.SEI, Dist.M.ASCE
Dr. Ellingwood is College of Engineering Eminent Scholar at Colorado State University. His professional career of nearly five decades has included research and administrative positions at the National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology), Johns Hopkins University, Georgia Institute of Technology, where he is the Raymond Allen Jones Endowed Chair Emeritus in Civil Engineering, and Colorado State University. His research and professional interests center on the application of probability and statistics to structural engineering, structural reliability assessment, analysis of natural and man-made hazards and disproportionate collapse, performance-based engineering and risk-informed decision-making. He is internationally recognized as an authority on structural load modeling, reliability and risk analysis of engineered facilities, and as the leader in the technical development and implementation of probability based codified design standards for building structures. He has authored or co authored over 400 papers and reports. As administrator of the Secretariat of American National Standard Committee A58 on Minimum Design Loads from 1977 to 1984, he was responsible for managing the development of ANSI Standard A58.1 1982, which included the general probability based load criteria for limit states design that have appeared in successive editions of the ASCE/SEI Standard 7 on Minimum Design Loads for the past four decades, the AISC Specification, ACI Standard 318 and the International Building Code. A long-term member of ASCE Standard Committee 7 (1975-2023), he currently serves on ASCE Standard Committees on Mitigation if Disproportionate Collapse (ASCE/SEI 76-23) and on Load and Resistance Factor Design (LRFD) of Pultruded Fiber-reinforced Polymer (FRP) Structures (ASCE/SEI 73-23). He is former Editor of Structural Safety, the leading international journal in that field, and serves on several other editorial boards. He is recipient of numerous awards from ASCE, AISC and other professional organization, a Distinguished Member of ASCE, a Fellow of the Structural Engineering Institute and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Dan M. Frangopol, Sc.D., P.E., F.EMI, F.SEI, Dist.M.ASCE
Dan M Frangopol is the inaugural holder of the Fazlur R. Khan Endowed Chair of Structural Engineering and Architecture at Lehigh University. Before joining Lehigh University in 2006, he was Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he is now Professor Emeritus. He is recognized as a pioneer in the field of life-cycle engineering of civil and marine structures under various types of hazards. His main research interests are in the development and application of probabilistic and optimization concepts and methods to civil and marine engineering, including: structural reliability and probabilistic mechanics; life-cycle cost analysis; probability-based assessment, design, and multi-criteria life-cycle optimization of structures and infrastructure systems; structural health monitoring; life-cycle performance maintenance and management of structures and distributed infrastructure under extreme events (earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and floods); risk-based assessment and decision making; multi-hazard risk mitigation; infrastructure sustainability and resilience to disasters; and climate change adaptation. Dr. Frangopol is the founding president of the International Association for Bridge Maintenance and Safety (IABMAS) and the International Association for Life-Cycle Civil Engineering (IALCCE). He has authored/co-authored 4 books and over 470 articles in archival journals, including 14 prize winning papers. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the international journal Structure and Infrastructure Engineering. He is also the founder and inaugural chair of the ASCE-SEI Technical Council on Life-cycle Performance, Safety, Reliability and Risk of Structural Systems. Dr. Frangopol is the recipient of several awards from ASCE, IABSE, IASSAR, ISHMII, SAE and other professional organizations, such as the Newmark, Freudenthal, Housner, Croes (twice), TY Lin, and Khan Medals, the Ang Award, and the Lifetime Achievement Award in Education (OPAL). He holds 4 honorary doctorates and 14 honorary professorships from major universities. Dr. Frangopol is a member of the US National Academy of Construction, a foreign member of the Canadian, Japan and Mexican Academy of Engineering, Academia Europaea (London), Royal Academy of Belgium, Romanian Academy, Romanian Academy of Technical Sciences, a Fellow of ACI, EMI. IABSE, ISHMII, SEI, and a Distinguished Member of ASCE.
Michel Ghosn, Ph.D., F.SEI, M.ASCE
Michel Ghosn is a Professor of Civil Engineering at the City College of The City University of New York (CUNY). His main expertise is in structural reliability applied to bridge systems. His research work involves: a) the development of reliability-based structural design LRFD codes and standards and load rating methods; b) the time-dependent modeling of extreme loading events, load combinations, and multi-hazard analysis accounting for the effect of climate change; and c) the development of system reliability methods and criteria for evaluating structural system safety, redundancy and robustness. He was involved in the original development of the Bridge Weigh-In-Motion system and the modeling of truck traffic live loads and other extreme loading events for assessing the safety of deteriorating highway bridges and pavements. The reliability-based live load factors and system redundancy factors he developed have been implemented in the AASHTO Manual of Bridge Evaluation (MBE) and the AASHTO method for adjusting live load factors based on collected WIM truck weight data. Professor Ghosn served until Oct. 2022 as the Chairman of the SEI-ASCE Technical Council on Life Cycle Performance, Safety, Reliability and Risk of Structural Systems and is serving as a Managing Editor for the journal of Structure and Infrastructure Engineering. He is also a member of the ASCE-7 standards committee
Dr. Gina Henderson is the current Chair of the Department of Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences Department at the U.S. Naval Academy, where she has been a professor of climate and atmospheric science for the past 13 years. She received her B.S in geography from University College Dublin, her Ph.D. in climatology from the University of Delaware, and her postdoctoral fellowship at Rutgers University. Dr. Henderson’s research interests span from global to local scales, investigating patterns in large-scale atmospheric circulation. Most recently she has focused on how variability in Arctic and Antarctic sea ice and snow can be tied to tropical atmospheric variability, research that has significant Naval and societal benefits as changes in sea ice melt and freeze dates impact accessibility to the Arctic Ocean. On the local scale, she is actively involved with efforts to investigate past, current and future impacts of sea level rise and nuisance flooding here at the Naval Academy and at other Naval installations, and serves as the co-chair of the Academy’s Sea Level Rise Advisory Committee (SLRAC).
Omar A Jaradat, Ph.D., P.E., D.PE, M.ASCE
Dr. Jaradat is a Technical Director for Structures nationwide with Moffatt & Nichol. His responsibility includes program oversight, project management, and integrated design for marine infrastructure that promotes optimization, resiliency, sustainability, code, and technology advancement. Dr. Jaradat is a 20+ year practitioner in marine engineering, port planning, big ship ready impact analyses, and engineering research projects throughout the Americas and in the Middle East. His experience includes consulting on more than 150 marine terminal projects with international and national private firms and public organizations. Representative clients at the federal, state, local, and international levels include US NAVFAC, Ports of Los Angeles; Long Beach; Seattle; Oakland; San Francisco, cities of Los Angeles, Huntington Beach, Newport, and Khalifa Port Container Terminal Detailed Design, Abu Dhabi; among others. Dr. Jaradat is an expert in the field of performance-based design of pile-supported structures in terms of design, analysis, and engineering of infrastructure systems such as ports and harbor structures, bridges, retaining structures and buildings. He has led the development and upgrade of port-wide design criteria for the port operations and complexes at Los Angeles and Long Beach, California which involved crane-wharf interaction analysis for design and evaluation of wharf structures. In addition, Dr. Jaradat uses state-of-the-art analysis and design methodologies of linear and non-linear dynamic time-history analysis, spectral analysis, and non-linear static pushover analysis. Dr. Jaradat serves on numerous national technical committees specialized in developing code standards for seismic analysis and design of reinforced concrete elements. He is chair of ASCE/COPRI Piers and Wharves Standards committee, chair of ASCEC/COPRI Port Certification Program, member of the ASCE/COPRI 61 Standards committee on Seismic Design of Piers & Wharves; and member of PIANC MarCom Working Group 225.
Dr. Kunkel is an Atmospheric Sciences Professor at North Carolina State University and Lead Scientist for Assessments with the North Carolina Ins?tute for Climate Studies. He has 40+ years of experience performing climate research. His research has focused on climate variability and change, par?cularly related to extreme weather and climate events. He has documented long-term (centuryplus) historical trends in heavy precipita?on, heat and cold waves, freeze seasons, and snowfall. Several of his research products are included in the U.S. Environmental Protec?on Agency’s Climate Change Indicators in the United States reports. He recently completed a project which provided heavy rainfall design values incorpora?ng future changes under a warmer world for the U.S. He is an author on the Third (2014) and Fourth (2018) U.S. Na?onal Climate Assessments, lead author on the North Carolina Climate Science Report (2020), and an author on recent climate assessments for the Great Lakes (2019) and Illinois (2021). He is a contribu?ng author on the 3rd, 4th, and 6th Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He has provided scien?fic leadership and supervisory oversight for NOAA’s Na?onal Climate Assessment Technical Support Unit since 2010. He has published over 180 peer-reviewed scien?fic journal ar?cles and book chapters. He holds a B.S. degree in Physics from Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Meteorology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.
Dr. Yue Li is the Leonard Case Jr. Professor of Civil Engineering at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. He received his Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2005. Dr. Li's research focuses on resilient civil infrastructure, climatic adaptation, and natural and man-made hazard mitigation. He holds editorial positions for several journals, including serving as the Section Editor for the ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering and Associate Editor for the ASCE Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities. He is also on the Editorial Board of Structure Safety and the Journal of Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure. Dr. Li is an active member of several ASCE/SEI committees, including serving as the chair of the committee on Risk Assessment of Structural Infrastructure Facilities and Risk-Based Decision Making, voting member of Load Combination Subcommittee of ASCE/SEI 7 - Minimum Design Loads and Associated Criteria for Buildings and Other Structures. He was the founding member and the chair of ASCE/SEI committee on Multiple Hazard Mitigation. He has received numerous awards, including the Case School of Engineering Graduate Teaching Award in 2020, the Fulbright Award in 2013, the Outstanding Paper Award of the ASCE Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities in 2012, and the Michigan Technological University Research Excellence Fund Award in 2008. Dr. Li has authored over 250 publications, including more than 100 journal papers. He has worked as a structural engineer and was involved in the design of the international terminal at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
Ming Liu, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE
Dr. Liu is a research structural engineer at Naval Facilities Engineering and Expeditionary Warfare Center (NAVFAC EXWC) in Port Hueneme, California. His expertise in civil engineering covers field testing and laboratory measurement with Nondestructive Testing (NDT) methods, forensic investigations for extreme events, such as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, as well as civil and structural designs. His technical role in federal service since 2009 has involved structural analysis and safety evaluation beyond the current design code requirements, including, but not limited to, risk analysis of concrete dams subjected to strong earthquakes, tsunami design loads for naval facilities, and structural design reviews on nuclear safety-related structures under seismic loads beyond the code requirements. His current research interest focuses on the risk-based structural safety evaluation and design with considerations of life-cycle performance and physical evidences from both experimental tests and computer simulations. Ming serves several SEI-ASCE committees and was one of the three primary organizers for the international workshop on risk-based structural evaluation methods at the ASCE Headquarters in September 2014. Ming is author or coauthor of about 40 scientific publications, including technical committee documents, book chapters, journal articles, and conference papers. Currently, he is the chair of ACI 348 “Structural Reliability and Safety", and is a voting member of ACI 444 "Structural Health Monitoring and Instrumentation", and ACI 562 "Evaluation, Repair, and Rehabilitation of Concrete Buildings". Ming received a Ph.D. in structural engineering from the University of Colorado –Boulder (2006). He has been a registered professional engineer in Colorado since 2001.
Terri McAllister, PhD, PE, F.SEI, Dist. M.ASCE
Dr. McAllister is the Acting Division Chief for Materials and Structural Systems at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and has been the NIST Liaison for the NIST-funded Center for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning for the last 8 years. Dr. McAllister has conducted research on community and infrastructure resilience over the last decade, focusing on the integrated performance of physical infrastructure and their recovery after disruptive events. Her research has included the development of community resilience planning guidance and models with a focus on how buildings and infrastructure system performance affects the social and economic recovery of communities, and on how to incorporate community impacts in design codes and standards for buildings. Recent research is considering how future climate conditions affect community and infrastructure resilience. She has over 20 years of expertise in structural reliability, risk assessment, failure analysis, and the performance of structures in fire. She co-led structural failure analyses of the WTC towers and WTC 7 for the NIST WTC Investigation, conducted reliability studies of New Orleans levee systems for the USACE following Hurricane Katrina, and evaluated Hurricane Sandy flood effects on infrastructure as part of a FEMA MAT. Earlier in her career, she spent 8 years at NAVFAC-EXWC (formerly NCEL) conducting research on mooring systems and hydrodynamic forces on structures. She received the 2021 ASCE Walter P Moore, Jr award and 2018 ASCE Ernest E Howard Award for her research on structural codes, standards and resilience. She has served on the ASCE/SEI 7 Standard Main Committee for over 20 years and has chaired the Load Combinations SubCommittee since 2010. She also serves on the ASCE Infrastructure Resilience Division; the Technical Council on Life-Cycle Performance, Safety, Reliability and Risk of Structural Systems; and the SEI Board Level Resilience Committee.
Jeffrey A Melby, Ph.D., P.E., D.CE, M.ASCE
Dr. Melby is a retired Senior Research Engineer for the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory. He has over 150 publications and led US Army Corps of Engineers research in coastal risk analysis, coastal flood risk, Coastal Hazards System (a national coastal storm data resource), coastal structure engineering and artificial intelligence modeling of coastal storm responses. Dr. Melby was the ERDC senior technical engineer on many large studies including the FEMA Region V (Great Lakes) portion of the National Flood Insurance Program, North Atlantic Comprehensive Coastal Study, Coastal Texas Study Galveston Island to Bolivar Peninsula Morphology Study, Sabine to Galveston Flood Risk Management Study, Chesapeake Midbay Feasibility and PED studies, and Coastal Hazards System. In addition, his experience includes many ERDC research and site-specific studies focused on risk assessments and coastal structure engineering. Dr. Melby has been active in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) for several decades including serving on ASCE/COPRI Coastal Engineer Certification committee, ASCE7 Flood Loads Committee, ASCE Coastal Engineering Research Council and ASCE Coastal Structures Committee, and he is a former member of the Association of Coastal Engineers Board of Directors and two PIANC working groups. He routinely teaches short courses on coastal flood risk and coastal structure engineering at international and USACE conferences and workshops. Dr. Melby has received over 30 Army and professional awards including the Bronze De Fluery Medal, 2017 USACE engineer of the year, 2016 ERDC Researcher of the Year, 2003 ERDC Vogel Engineer of the Year, US Army Research and Development Achievement Award, and the ERDC Most Impressive R&D Achievement award 7 times. He has been awarded over 40 patents as co-inventor of the Core-Loc®, Samoa Stone®, and C-ROCTM concrete armor units.
Sarah E Mouring, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE
Dr. Sarah Mouring earned a B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Delaware in 1987, and M.S. and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 1990 and 1993, respectively. She is a registered professional engineer in Maryland. Dr. Mouring began her career at the Naval Academy as a visiting assistant research professor in 1992 and joined the Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering (NAOE) Department faculty full-time in 1993. She founded the Society of American Military Engineers (SAME) Student Post at the Academy in 1996 and continues to serve as the faculty representative. Dr. Mouring was awarded the National SAME Bliss Medal for her superior efforts in mentoring students in engineering and related disciplines. She has taught numerous courses at the Academy including core, major, major electives, and courses outside her department. In 2017 Dr. Mouring was awarded the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE) Outstanding Civil Engineering Educator for the State of Maryland. She has held many service roles at the Naval Academy which include membership on the Promotion & Tenure Committee, Yard-wide and Division Trident Scholar Committee, Bowman Scholar Review Committee, Director of Teaching and Learning Search Committee, and Military Faculty Teaching Awards Committee. Outside the Academy, her service roles include being a reviewer for numerous international journals and conferences as well as membership on conference and engineering societies committees. Her main research interests in Ocean Engineering include composite joining methods, wave energy conversion, and wave-structure interaction. Her research sponsors have included the National Science Foundation (NSF), Office of Naval Research (ONR), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), 3M, National Center for Advanced Manufacturing (NCAM), Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC), and the Naval Civil Engineering Laboratory (NCEL). Dr. Mouring spent one summer at NSF as a part-time Visiting Programs Officer for CMS, Large Structural and Building Systems. Finally, she has held several leadership positions. She was the Ocean Engineering Program Director from 2014-2016 and 2022-2023. From 2016 until 2022, she was the Department Chair of NAOE. Most recently Dr. Mouring was appointed the interim Associate Dean of Engineering and Weapons in July 2023.
Connie Ramsey is a Biologist currently serving as an Acting Section Chief in the Installation Support Branch (ISB), Planning Division within the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Baltimore District (NAB). The mission of ISB is to provide natural, cultural, and water resources compliance and support to all military installations and other federal agencies located within the NAB area of responsibility. ISB supports military installation environmental offices, interagency partners, and other District Divisions and Offices, including the Washington Aqueduct, Operations, Regulatory, and Engineering, to provide cultural resource, water resources, and environmental compliance support. In her current role as an acting section chief, she provides leadership and guidance to a multi-disciplinary team composed of Community Planners, Biologists, Ecologists, Geographers, Engineers, Archeologists, and Water Resources subject experts.
Donald R. (Don) Scott, P.E., S.E., F.SEI, F.ASCE
Donald R. Scott is President of Don Scott Consulting, PLLC. Mr. Scott has over 40 years of experience in the design, evaluation, and rehabilitation of building structures. Mr. Scott is currently the President of the Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) of ASCE and a past President of the Board of Directors of the Applied Technology Council. He is currently the Chair of the ASCE 7-28 Committee and the SEI Performance-based Design Committee. Mr. Scott is past Chair of the ASCE 7 Wind Load Subcommittee and currently serves on the ISO/TC 59/WG 4 "Resilience of buildings and civil engineering works", ISO 4354 “Wind Actions on Structures”, and ISO/TC 98/SC3 “Loads, forces and other actions”. Don is the recipient of the James Delahay Memorial Award from NCSEA and the Walter P. Moore Jr. Award from SEI and was recognized as one of Engineering News Records Top 25 Newsmakers in 2022 for his work in the development of Codes and Standards.
Jeffrey G. Shelden, P.E., M.ASCE
Jeff Shelden serves as a Senior Engineer in Moffatt & Nichol’s Water Practice. With over 38 years of experience, Mr. Shelden has worked on hundreds of projects related to coastal erosion and sediment transport; coastal, estuarine and riverine hydrodynamics; wave hindcasting and transformation; coastal structure design; bridge hydraulics; dredging; urban waterfronts and marinas; ports and harbors; navigation; and mooring and berthing analyses. Mr. Shelden regularly leads multidisciplinary teams in completing complex waterfront projects involving planning, engineering, economics, environmental, architecture, heritage, and landscape disciplines. He is accustomed to providing project vision through demonstrated creativity, foresight, and solid technical judgment in anticipating and solving unprecedented planning and engineering problems. He is one of the firm’s thought leaders in riverine, estuarine, and coastal hydraulics and processes, as well as the application of various numerical models used for those analyses. Mr. Shelden was one of the principal investigators that developed the Federal Highway Administration Guide Specifications for Bridges Vulnerable to Coastal Storms and Handbook of Retrofit Options for Bridges Vulnerable to Coastal Storms. He also served as the project manager for the “Changing Course Lower Mississippi River Delta Design Competition.” His team was one of the three winning teams chosen after a global design competition to develop innovative designs for a self-sustaining Lower Mississippi River Delta.
Mark G. Stewart, Ph.D., FTSE, FIEAust, FIAPS, FRSN
Mark G. Stewart is a Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering, and Director of the Centre for Built Infrastructure Resilience at the University of Technology Sydney. Professor Stewart is an expert in risk assessment, public policy decision making, and protective infrastructure for extreme hazards. He is the author of five books including Probabilistic Risk Assessment of Engineering Systems; and Terror, Security, and Money: Balancing the Risks, Benefits, and Costs of Homeland Security; and edited books Climate Adaptation Engineering: Risks and Economics for Infrastructure Decision-making and Engineering for Extremes: Decision Making in an Uncertain World as well as more than 500 technical papers and reports. He has over 35 years of experience in probabilistic risk and vulnerability assessment of infrastructure and security systems that are subject to man-made and natural hazards, including climate change. Professor Stewart recently led a consortium of five universities in Australia for the $3.5 million CSIRO Flagship Cluster Fund project Climate Adaptation Engineering for Extreme Events. He is also a leading investigator with the reliability-based calibration of the Australian Structural Standards. Professor Stewart is also the Chief Investigator of collaborative explosives field testing and ballistics performance programs with the Australian Defence Force. He is President of the International Association of Protective Structures. He is Editor-in-Chief of Structural Safety, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.
Victoria (Tori) Tomiczek, Ph.D., EIT, M.ASCE
Tori Tomiczek is an Associate Professor in the Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering Department at the U.S. Naval Academy (USNA). She earned her B.S. in Civil Engineering at the University of Florida and PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at the University of Notre Dame. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Oregon State University (OSU) before joining the Ocean Engineering faculty at USNA in 2017. Dr. Tomiczek’s focus area is in coastal engineering and resilience. She has participated in and led numerous field reconnaissance surveys evaluating damage and recovery following hurricane and extreme storm events. Dr. Tomiczek has also enjoyed working on physical model experiments at USNA, OSU, and Kyoto University. She is interested in better understanding wave-induced forces on coastal structures to inform design guidance and finding sustainable, resilient solutions that mitigate damage due to coastal flood hazards. Dr. Tomiczek is an active member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). She served as President of the Coastal, Oceans, Ports, and Riverine Institute (COPRI) from 2021-2022. She has also contributed to committees in the Structural Engineering Institute (SEI), including ASCE 7-22 Flood Loads and Tsunami Loads Subcommittees, ASCE 7-28 Flood Loads Subcommittee, ASCE 24 Subcommittee, and Resilience Committee, as well as the Environmental and Water Resources Institute (EWRI) Natural Infrastructure Committee.
Mari R. Tye, Ph.D., C.Eng., M.ASCE, M.ICE
Dr. Tye is a Project Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in the Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory. Her research centers on projected changes in extreme weather and climate events, and translating that information to support climate resilient infrastructure planning, design and adaptation. Through her background as a Professional Civil Engineer, Mari collaborates with many different practitioners, including water resource managers, civil infrastructure designers, and reinsurers. Mari is also a National Institute of Standards and Technology Professional Research Program Fellow, examining how to incorporate the effects of climate change in building codes and standards. She is also an active member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Task Force to develop climate ready design codes.
Mari received her PhD in statistical climatology from Newcastle University, UK; MEng in Civil Engineering with French from Nottingham University; and is a Chartered Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers and Member of the ASCE. Prior to joining NCAR, Mari worked as a Civil Engineer in flood prevention and mitigation, highways design, and ports and harbor design. She contributed to the design and contract supervision of the New Port of Morocco in Tangiers, and extensions to the Humber International Terminal, UK. During 2010 she spent a three month internship with the Scottish Government's Climate Change Adaptation team as part of a policy knowledge exchange program, responding to the likely impacts of climate change in Scotland.
Mari serves as a link between climate science and civil engineering through a number of national technical committees. She is the past-Chair of the ASCE Committee on Adaptation to a Changing Climate, co-Chair of the ASCE INSPIRE conference committee, communicating member of the new ASCE/SEI 7 Standards Committee Chapter 36 on Climate Change, and a member of the ASCE-NOAA Task Force.
Liliana Velásquez-Montoya, PhD, M.ASCE
Dr. Velasquez is an Assistant Professor in the Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering Department at the U.S. Naval Academy (USNA). She earned her B.S. in Civil Engineering and her M.Sc. in Earth Sciences at EAFIT University, Colombia. She earned her PhD in Civil Engineering at North Carolina State University, where she also held a post-doctoral researcher role before joining the Ocean Engineering faculty at USNA in 2019. Dr. Velasquez research interests include estuarine hydrodynamics, coastal morphodynamics and assessment of infrastructure vulnerability to coastal hazards via numerical modeling and geospatial analysis of in-situ and remotely sensed data. Dr. Velasquez has been part of various field experiments in the Outer Banks of North Carolina and the southern Caribbean Sea, regions for which she has completed numerical modeling studies to explore seasonal and extreme hydrodynamics. Her research has been funded by the North Carolina Department of Transportation, The U.S. Coastal Research Program, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Dr. Velasquez is a member of USNA's Sea Level Rise Advisory Council and has taught various courses at USNA including core, major, and major electives.