New NHERI Program Expands Learning Opportunities for Early-Career Researchers
NHERI’s Early Career Research Professional Learning Community program complements the successful NHERI Summer Institute
Published on September 2, 2026
This year, the NHERI Education and Community Outreach team quietly started a new program for early-career researchers who want to learn about the NHERI network, about NSF-funded opportunities in natural hazards research — and about best practices in STEM-focused academia.
Dr. Karina Vielma, associate professor of engineering education at the University of Texas at San Antonio, leads a NHERI Early Career PLC session. The PLC is open to early-career researchers in natural hazards and STEM fields.
The NHERI Early Career Research Professional Learning Community program provides free, accessible, national-caliber professional development for new scholars forging their paths in STEM academia.
The PLC began in May 2026 with a series of facility-focused webinars, now available on the ECO YouTube channel. In these talks, NHERI principal investigators discuss, in detail, their NSF-funded experimental laboratories, computational and data offerings, and other cognate resources — including considerable research expertise in the field of natural hazards damage mitigation.
Complementing the Summer Institute. The impetus for the Professional Learning Community program is NHERI’s highly successful Summer Institute, also tailored for early career researchers. To date, fourteen NHERI Summer Institute alumni have gone on to earn NSF CAREER awards. As an in-person, annual event, however, the SI serves a limited number of participants. To expand — and complement — the Summer Institute’s curriculum, the ECO committee created the Early Career Research Professional Learning Community as an online program, taking place multiple times each year, with unlimited participation. Over 100 researchers attended the spring PLC sessions.
“My overall experience in NSF NHERI PLC Session was very positive,” commented one attendee. “The session was informative, well-organized, and highly relevant to natural hazards research and practice.”
Following each session, moderators host interactive activities that encourage continued learning and scholarly collaboration — additional opportunities for making valuable professional connections within the greater natural hazards research community.
The NHERI Early Career PLC program is open to all early-career researchers looking to strengthen their research and proposal writing skills — and to join a community of similarly interested scholars.
Fall 2026 PLC sessions
This fall, the NHERI ECO hosts two new sessions. The first tackles early career hurdles:
September 22, 2026. This PLC session is a panel discussion called “Successfully Navigating Early-Career Research Challenges.” Our panelists are Mohammad Khosravi, Tricia Clayton, and Stephanie Paal, all NHERI researchers with strong records of competitive funding. Participants will learn to:
- Recognize common challenges of early-career researchers on the tenure track, including time management across required workloads.
- Identify ways to approach common challenges, including networking with experienced researchers and joining grant proposals with awardees.
- Explicate the current state of “uncertainty” in academia from their current position.
The October PLC session will feature successful NHERI researchers exploring key topics that connect research discovery to successful proposal development. Stay tuned to NHERI email announcements for date and registration details.
Kudos to the NHERI Education and Community Outreach Committee, volunteer NHERI faculty who work behind the scenes to educate the next generation of natural hazards engineering researchers, from undergraduates to early-career faculty.
Do you have ideas for future Early Career PLC topics? Contact Dr. Robin Nelson of the NHERI ECO: robin.nelson@utsa.edu.