Jamie E. Padgett, Ph.D., F.SEI, F.ASCE, the Stanley C. Moore Professor and department chair of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University in Houston, has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
Padgett is a structural engineer whose research is focused on multihazard risk and resilience modeling of structural portfolios and infrastructure systems, while understanding their impacts on communities. Her work develops new methods to quantify and improve the performance of infrastructure exposed to natural hazards such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and flooding. Padgett’s research has applications to a range of systems, including bridges, tank farms, energy and industrial facilities, and intermodal transportation systems. She has published over 300 articles in journals or archived conference proceedings in the general area of structural fragility, life-cycle assessment, and infrastructure resilience.
She has received several prestigious awards and recognitions, including the ASCE Charles Martin Duke Lifeline Earthquake Engineering Award (2024); TAMEST Edith and Peter O’Donnell Award (2023); Executive Leadership in Academic Technology, Engineering and Science (ELATES) Fellowship (2021-22); Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI) Objective Resilience Distinguished Lecturer (2019); ASCE Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize (2017); and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award (2011). She is also a fellow of the Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) (2020) and the founding chair of its technical committee on Multiple Hazard Mitigation.
Among other advisory and professional service roles, Padgett serves on editorial boards for such journals as ASCE’s Journal of Structural Engineering, Structural Safety, and Reliability Engineering and System Safety. Padgett serves in leadership roles within several large national research efforts, among them the NIST Center of Excellence for Risk-based Resilience Planning, the NSF Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) Cyberinfrastructure “DesignSafe-CI,” and the Severe Storm Prediction Education and Evacuation from Disasters (SSPEED) Center. She is the faculty director of the inaugural Gulf Scholars Program at Rice University funded by NASEM’s Gulf Research Program, and an NSF BRITE fellow.
Padgett has played an active role in supporting open-source software, data sharing, and publication in the natural hazards engineering domain, contributing to the development of IN-CORE (Interdependent Networked Community Resilience Modeling Environment) and DesignSafe-CI, including numerous shared testbeds, datasets, and training resources.
