Ali Nejat, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, a professor of civil engineering and associate academic dean for undergraduate studies at the Edward E. Whitacre Jr. College of Engineering, Texas Tech University, has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
Nejat also serves as founding director of the Center of Excellence in Capacity-building for REsilient Housing (CECREH), a research center funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
He has spent the past 15 years building a new scientific foundation for understanding how communities recover after disasters. He led development of RecovUS with his team, and that was one of the first agent-based models to simulate how households, agencies, and community members interact and make decisions during postdisaster housing recovery, supported by a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, one of only 11 such awards given nationally that year within the Engineering Directorate's infrastructure and disaster recovery portfolio.
Nejat was also among the pioneers in applying statistical and machine learning methods, including LASSO regression and spatial models, along with early use of nighttime satellite imagery, to study recovery after disasters such as Hurricane Sandy and Winter Storm Uri.
His research has contributed to national guidelines through collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Applied Technology Council on functional recovery for buildings. He was also invited as a co-author for the Third Assessment of Natural Hazards led by the Natural Hazards Center, the first major update to the field's knowledge base since Disasters by Design.
As director of CECREH, Nejat leads a multi-institutional consortium advancing climate resilient and affordable housing research, connecting universities, federal partners, and housing advocacy organizations including Texas Housers, the National Low Income Housing Coalition, and the Urban Institute.
Beyond his numerous peer-reviewed publications, Nejat served as associate editor of the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, the top-ranked journal in emergency management, and has secured more than $3 million dollars in external prorated funding as principal or co-principal investigator. He has been recognized as a Fulbright Scholar, an NSF Game Changer Academies Fellow, and Texas Tech University's Most Influential Faculty Member.
Beyond research, Nejat has mentored more than 20 doctoral students to completion and has served for more than a decade as Faculty Adviser to the Associated General Contractors Student Chapter, coaching student teams to first-place regional rankings for four consecutive years in national design-build competitions.
