NHERI Graduate Student Council

Harman Singh is a dual-title Ph.D. candidate in Geography and Climate Science at Penn State University. Her primary study area is urban flooding, climate adaptation, and water resource management in India. Her research integrates multimodal data (data that spans different types and contexts) to uncover flood histories in data-scarce environments through spatial analysis, remote sensing, natural language processing, and qualitative methods. She is a graduate research assistant at the Riparia Lab, where she is part of interdisciplinary teams researching transboundary water sharing in India and the evolving landscape of solar and fracking infrastructure in Pennsylvania.

Harman has been a member of NHERI GSC since its inception in 2021 and has served as the Vice-Chair (2021-2023) and Chair of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) committee (2023-2024). In these roles, she has led workshops for the NHERI REU program as well as GSC, collaborated and organized funding opportunities such as the 2024 travel award to attend the Natural Hazards Workshop, wrote a collaborative journal paper on the 2024 NHERI GSC Mini-Conference, co-authored the GSC’s inclusivity statement and DEI resources page, represented NHERI GSC at the 2022 Natural Hazards Summit, and hosted several invited talks and networking events. As the Chair of her college’s Sustainability Council: Student Committee, executive committee member of Supporting Women in Geography (SWIG), and president of the Penn State Association of Water Students (PAWS), Harman has experience fostering a collaborative and inclusive environment as well as communicating and advocating for the needs of graduate students. Harman aspires to apply her past leadership skills and experiences as a GSC member to develop a shared vision plan, facilitate cross-committee projects, and reinforce knowledge exchange between GSC members and GSC alumni. Through NHERI GSC, Harman has gained invaluable resources, a sense of belonging, and a deeper understanding of the field. She hopes to continue the legacy of NHERI GSC by fostering a supportive and thriving community for graduate students by encouraging collaboration, innovation, and personal growth.

Richard Campos is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Oklahoma working with the Oklahoma NSF EPSCoR, a multidisciplinary program designed to enhance Oklahoma’s exploration and growth in the STEM fields, to provide resilience strategies for infrastructure systems by analyzing hazards (e.g., ice storms, wildfires, earthquakes, and winds), risk, and fragility of electrical and transportation infrastructure components to better infrastructure resiliency. He works alongside many scientists such as geographers, meteorologists, social scientists, and other engineers to provide socially sustainable solutions for water, carbon, and infrastructure resilience in Oklahoma. He aims to become a professor and help communities and organizations enhance their current infrastructure system’s resilience to severe natural hazards by teaching and advancing the field of resilience engineering.

Jordan Nakayama is a third-year doctoral student in Structural Engineering at Auburn University. Her research focuses on developing theory guided data science frameworks for learning from post-event windstorm reconnaissance data, bringing together her field reconnaissance experiences with her knowledge of structural engineering to holistically understand structural performance in windstorms. She has served as the Secretary of NHERI GSC since its inception in 2021, establishing precedence for the NHERI GSC communication and documentation. She has served as the Annual Report Chair for both of the NHERI GSC Annual Reports ('23 and '24). Passionate about the opportunities that NHERI GSC provides its members, she has attended many conferences through funding opportunities provided to her in her involvement in the NHERI GSC and presented/hosted NHERI GSC sessions at these conferences. Jordan is committed to furthering NHERI GSC's reach and impact through her leadership in the organization as she hopes to become the next President of the NHERI Graduate Student Council.

Anamika Malla is a PhD student majoring in Wind Science and Engineering in National Wind Institute at Texas Tech University. Her research focusses on fluid-structure interactions, specifically numerical investigation of tornado-like loads on low-rise buildings. Anamika’s research is twofold: numerical simulation through Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and validation with experimental simulation of tornado-like loads. Anamika's group was the SimCenter winner at Computational Academy 2023 at UT, Austin.

Safoura Safari is a second-year PhD candidate in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. Since Fall 2023, she has been a member of the Center for Disaster Resilience (CDR) at UMD. Her research focuses on transportation policy, with a particular emphasis on the equitable deployment of electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure. She also investigates the accessibility and usage patterns of EV charging stations during natural hazards, particularly flood events. Safoura holds a Master's degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering with a focus on Water Resources Management from the University of Tehran (2021), where her research centered on groundwater sustainability during droughts. She earned her Bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering from Isfahan University of Technology in 2017, which provided her with a solid foundation in engineering and environmental sustainability. Beyond her academic achievements, Safoura has broader experiences in leadership roles. During her undergraduate studies, she served on the executive committee of the student guild council, where she helped organize key events, including health and food festivals, competitions, and graduation ceremonies. More recently, she served on the executive committee for the NHERI 2024 Summit at UMD. She was also awarded the NHERI Computational Academy 2024 travel grant held in Austin, Texas. Safoura has been an active member of NHERI GSC since February 2024, and is eager to continue her active involvement in NHERI GSC committee and contribute to efforts aimed at enhancing community preparedness and infrastructure resilience in response to natural hazards.

Burak Duran, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of New Hampshire, specializes in Structural Engineering. His research centers around Deep Learning-based Structural Health Monitoring of Bridges and Transfer Learning applications. By leveraging deep learning techniques, he assesses the current health state of bridges, detects damage, and pinpoints its location. He investigates the transferability of knowledge gained from one bridge to another through Transfer Learning. This impactful project is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and involves collaborative and multi-disciplinary efforts with several other universities. As a Fulbright Scholar, Burak holds an M.Sc. degree with a focus on Structural and Earthquake Engineering from the University at Buffalo. His academic journey extends beyond the classroom—following major earthquakes, he has actively participated in reconnaissance studies to delve into the underlying causes and profound effects of natural disasters on communities. He has published several journal papers, conference proceedings, and technical reports in this field. Furthermore, he holds membership in several professional organizations, including the NHERI GSC, EERI, StEER, and ASCE. His work advances the field of structural engineering and contributes to community resilience in the face of extreme events.

Daniel Yahya is a PhD student in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Auburn University. His research focuses on advancing the sustainability and resilience of the built environment against natural and climatological hazards, such as tornadoes and hurricanes, by integrating engineering principles with emerging technologies like machine learning and computer vision. As the current Chair of Membership for NHERI GSC, Daniel has played a pivotal role in managing and expanding the organization's membership within the United States and beyond. Over the past year, he has led outreach initiatives targeting universities, faculties, and professional organizations with potential members—graduate students interested in natural hazards research. Under his leadership, the membership has grown significantly, and he continues to spearhead efforts to expand NHERI GSC’s international presence. In addition to his work with NHERI GSC, Daniel serves as a senator on the Graduate Student Council at Auburn University, where he passionately advocates for the interests of graduate students in his department. His track record of committee involvement is further enriched by his role on the Concession Board at Auburn University, where he evaluates and recommends funding for university-wide initiatives, and on the First-Year Experience Committee, where he applies his leadership skills to improve the experience of first-year graduate students. Daniel’s multifaceted leadership skills are instrumental in his commitment to furthering NHERI GSC’s reach and impact. He is dedicated to continuing his role as Chair of Membership, propelling the organization’s growth both within the United States and internationally.

Diako Abbasi is a third-year PhD student in the Center for Disaster Resilience, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. His research focuses on the intersection of natural hazards, federal aid, and local capacity, with the goal of enhancing infrastructure resilience by encouraging local governments to invest in their infrastructure. He also works on broader community resilience efforts, such as reducing long school closures due to natural disasters and improving the resilience and sustainability of EV charging station networks in response to hazard events. Diako has participated in several NHERI events, including the NHERI Computational Academy at TACC and the NHERI Computational Symposium at UCLA, and he served on the executive committee for the NHERI Natural Hazards Research Summit at UMD. In addition to his studies, he serves as a senator in the University of Maryland Senate, where he actively represents the interests of the university community and contributes to academic governance.

Rajendra Gautam is currently a master's student of Earthquake Engineering (structure) at Thapathali Campus, Institute of Engineering, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal. He has another master's degree in management and a professional degree in Project Management and WASH/Solid Waste. He has excellent steward management skills and delivery techniques with more than 10 years of demonstrated experience in civil engineering construction projects and consulting. He has worked for the United Nations as a national volunteer and a project manager in an international non-governmental organization in disaster recovery and reconstruction projects. From the beginning, he established the disaster mitigation measures required for community resiliency and enhanced the performance of infrastructures against hazards, preparing communities to be adept and resilient through capacity building. Moreover, his research areas of interest are structural control and isolation, affordable and sustainable construction, Disaster risk mitigation (DRR), critical infrastructures, and artificial intelligence like structural programming language using OpenSees/Python, C++, GIS, R & GEE, and MATLAB. He was involved in 2023 NHERI GSC Research Group Challenge with team #3 as a lead for developing and testing mitigation measures, shifting the vulnerability, and sustainable development.

Seyed Alireza Mirghafouri is a Ph.D. student at the Coastal and Hydraulic Engineering Lab at Stony Brook University. He earned his MSc from the University of Tehran in Hydraulic Structures and Water Engineering. He collaborates with the University of New Hampshire, the University of Delaware, and the Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory at Oregon State University on experimental and numerical modeling of fluid-soil-structure interactions.

Parisa Toofani Movaghar is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Civil Engineering Department at the University of Notre Dame. Her research focuses on the development of advanced data-driven tools to enhance computational efficiency and predictive accuracy in regional hazard risk assessments, particularly for coastal and earthquake hazards. She specializes in integrating machine learning techniques, including Graph Neural Networks and Deep Gaussian Processes, with traditional engineering data-driven models to improve the reliability of structural and coastal response predictions . Prior to her doctoral studies, Parisa worked as a multidisciplinary researcher, applying computational methods to structural analysis problems. She developed web-based platforms using Django and Python, leveraging data-driven techniques to extract actionable insights and create predictive models for structural responses, such as seismic behavior. Her work incorporates advanced statistical modeling and reduced-order modeling approaches to address the challenges of hazard simulation and risk assessment.

Rajee Tamrakar is a master's student in Geography and Environmental Resources at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where she also serves as the Secretary of the SIU GIS Club. Her research focuses on disaster risk reduction, mitigation and management, and climate change adaptation, with a particular emphasis on enhancing the resilience of vulnerable communities. Her master’s research explores managed retreat as a flood risk reduction strategy, analyzing the social, economic, and policy factors that influence the success or failure of community relocations in levee-protected areas along the Mississippi River. She is deeply interested in developing proactive, equitable climate adaptation strategies that bridge the gap between research and policy to support marginalized communities facing climate-induced hazards. Before her graduate studies, Rajee worked as a Research and Program Associate at a geospatial institute in Nepal, where she contributed to the development of the Anticipatory Action Tool (DASTAA) a platform designed to support proactive, data-driven decision-making. She also played a key role in designing household-level risk assessment metrics for rural Nepal focusing on multiple hazard, enabling local governments and humanitarian agencies to make evidence-based decisions for disaster preparedness and recovery programs.

Originally from Nepal, Rajee’s firsthand experiences with natural hazards like floods and earthquakes have fueled her passion for equitable disaster risk reduction and strengthened her commitment to community-centered resilience planning.

Pooria Mazaheri is currently doing his PhD in structural engineering and is a Research Assistant at Iowa State University. He brings a robust background in structural engineering with a focus on structural integrity management and risk assessment. His current work on an NSF-funded project targets enhancing the resilience of electric power networks under extreme weather conditions. With a deep understanding of the challenges in structural hazards and performance-based design, Pooria combines academic rigor with practical experience in mitigating natural hazards. His commitment to advancing infrastructure resilience against climate change and aging equips him uniquely to lead the Research Standing Committee, driving forward innovative research and collaboration within the natural hazards’ community. Pooria's career is marked by a commitment to advancing our infrastructure's robustness against the increasing threats of climate change and aging, making him an ideal candidate for the Chair of Research position. I am eager to bring my academic and practical experiences to the NHERI GSC, fostering groundbreaking research and collaboration initiatives.

Shelley McMullen is a doctoral candidate in the Planning, Geography and Design program at University of Colorado Denver. Her first career in civil engineering specializing in drainage, stormwater and flood management led her to pursue a dual master's degree in public administration and urban planning, and now a PhD in urban planning. Her dissertation research is focused on the tensions of land use planning and disaster risk management policy in Rwanda. Shelley is a part-time urban planning lecturer and has also been a research assistant and teaching assistant. On the volunteer side, Shelley has served as the chair of the Denver Mayor’s Pedestrian Advisory committee and currently serves as communications chair on the board of a Women in Design which is a local nonprofit intended to support women in a variety of design fields. Both the experience volunteering for an organization promoting networking between disciplines and background from both technical and social science reveal her commitment to the importance of transdisciplinary collaboration. She hopes to bring this enthusiasm to helping build community within the NHERI GSC. Not only is networking helpful for having the space to share some of the challenges of graduate school, tackling the complexity of disaster research needs strong partnerships between researchers with diverse expertise.

Avipriyo Chakraborty is a Ph.D. student in Geotechnical Engineering at Jackson State University, starting in fall 2021. Avipriyo completed his bachelor’s in civil engineering at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) in February 2013 and his master’s in science in Civil Engineering from Jackson State University in March 2023. Avipriyo has served as a professional engineer for seven years with areas of expertise in designing concrete and steel structures, foundation design, retrofitting of structures, and construction supervision. Right now, Avipriyo is working on a vegetation-based climate adaptive slope failure solution using Vetiver. In his research, he is exploring the impact of Vetiver based on laboratory testing, on-site subsurface investigation involving electric resistivity imaging, LiDAR, installed in situ sensor data, limit equilibrium method and Finite element method-based numerical analysis and machine learning modeling. As a researcher, Avipriyo has coauthored technical reports, journals, peer-reviewed conferences, technical reports, and presentations. Avipriyo has also won multiple national and international competitions, including the SWANA design competition in 2021 and the Geo video competition in 2023. He is serving as a chair of social media & outreach in the NHERI Student Council, a graduate student council funded by the National Science Foundation. He is also a student member of ASCE and has been selected as a member of the prestigious Alpha Kappa Mu Honor Society, Golden Key Honor Society for excellent academic record.

The coastal engineering representative position is currently vacant.

Anoop Kumar Tiwari is currently a research scholar at IIT Bhubaneswar, India, specializing in structural engineering with a focus on bridge engineering and the behavior of pile foundations, particularly p-y curves under dynamic loading and liquefaction. He holds a Master’s degree in Geotechnical Engineering from NIT Rourkela and a Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from Barkatullah University, Bhopal. Anoop has previously worked as an Assistant Professor at Rewa Engineering College and Mittal Institute of Technology. He has also completed professional development programs at IIM Udaipur, IIM Raipur, and IIT Indore. His technical skills include proficiency in SAP2000, PLAXIS, Abaqus, and Opensees. Anoop is dedicated to advancing his research and making significant contributions to the field of structural engineering.

Mohamed Hassan is a doctoral candidate in Civil Engineering at Louisiana State University, with a focus on coastal geotechnics and root-soil interaction analysis. Alongside his academic work, Mohamed has over six years of professional geotechnical engineering experience, having contributed to several high-profile projects both in the U.S. and internationally. His industry work includes major infrastructure projects such as the Cairo Monorail and the rehabilitation of the Old Aswan Dam in Egypt, where he applied innovative techniques in soil mechanics and foundation design. Mohamed's research integrates advanced imaging techniques, such as X-ray Computed Tomography (XCT) and Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), alongside machine learning models (ML) to improve the understanding of root-soil dynamics in coastal wetlands. His work aims to enhance coastal resilience and address critical environmental challenges. Mohamed's interdisciplinary expertise in both academic research and professional geotechnical engineering makes him a valuable candidate for the NHERI Graduate Student Council (GSC), where he aims to advocate for innovative approaches in natural hazard engineering and contribute to the broader research community.

Mohammad Movahedi is a Civil Engineering Ph.D. candidate at Florida State University, specializing in transportation planning and infrastructure resilience. His expertise extends to disaster reconnaissance, where he is involved in NHERI Natural Hazards Reconnaissance (RAPID) and in developing robust systems to mitigate the impact of natural disasters on urban infrastructure. His research incorporates advanced AI to improve disaster response strategies and infrastructure recovery, aiming to enhance the resilience of transportation networks against extreme weather events and other disruptions.

Bijan Sayyafzadeh is a Ph.D. candidate in Civil and Structural Engineering at the Qom University in Qom, Iran working with IIEES (International Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Seismology) on a multidisciplinary thesis about developing a flexible and extensible platform for quantitative risk assessment of natural hazards triggered technological accidents (Specifically Oil and Gas industries). His main interest is on numerical calculations and proposing new algorithms and creating and developing engineering software and systems or platforms. Providing diverse engineering software and making interaction between various engineering software using programming languages like Python, MATLAB and VB are some sample of his activities. He was elected as the top student during his master's degree in structural engineering at the Persian Gulf University (PGU), Iran and his thesis was on proposing a new algorithm for existing accelerograms modification to get more compatibility on a target spectrum. Working on fragilities of various industrial structures, seismic hazard analysis and quantitative risk assessment are his current main fields of research.

Erin Boyle uses she/her pronouns and is a doctoral student at Virgnia Tech in the Sociology department. Her research interests include food systems and how they are affected by disaster and hazard events. Between 2022 and 2024, Boyle worked with Dr. Liesel Ritchie to complete her master’s thesis titled, “The Role of Community-Based Organizations in Sudden-Onset and Chronic Disasters: The Case of Jackson, Mississippi, USA.” She has also worked with Ritchie on a grant with Feeding America by acting as the project manager and conducting qualitative interviews related to COVID-19 and changing food insecurity. Boyle is an aspiring disaster scholar and aims to continue working with community-based organizations to understand the methods used to assist vulnerable populations.

Arezoo Bakhshizadeh is a second-year PhD student at Florida State University specializing in wind engineering. In her PhD research, Arezoo focuses on developing an AI-integrated wind tunnel framework that enhances the adaptability and predictive accuracy of wind tunnel experiments. By implementing real-time adaptive experimentation, the system autonomously adjusts parameters to simulate complex, real-world wind conditions more accurately. As a member of NHERI, Arezoo is passionate about contributing to the wind engineering community, advancing research, and fostering collaboration between academia and industry.