Gulf Research Program Announces Early-Career Research Fellows in Offshore Energy Safety and Human Health and Community Resilience

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Gulf Research Program Announces Early-Career Research Fellows in Offshore Energy Safety and Human Health and Community Resilience

News Release| September 11, 2024

WASHINGTON -The Gulf Research Program (GRP) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine announced today its 2024-2026 cohorts of Early-Career Research Fellows in two tracks: Offshore Energy Safety and Human Health and Community Resilience.

The Early-Career Research Fellowships program supports emerging scientific leaders as they take on untested research ideas, pursue unique collaborations, and build a network of colleagues who share their interest in advancing the safety of the offshore energy system and improving the well-being of coastal communities and ecosystems.

Five fellows will be joining the Offshore Energy Safety Track, where their work will focus on contributing to the understanding, management, and reduction of systemic risk in offshore energy activities.

The seven fellows joining the Human Health and Community Resilience Track will contribute to the understanding of the role that resilience-based interventions play in addressing the root causes of climate, disaster, and health vulnerability associated with disparities in communities throughout the Gulf of Mexico region.

"We are delighted to have such a talented cohort of fellows pursuing innovative, collaborative research," said Karena Mary Mothershed, director of GRP's board on Gulf Education and Engagement. "We look forward to supporting these early-career researchers as they implement research that will have a lasting impact on the Gulf of Mexico region."

The Offshore Energy Safety Track fellows are:

Yaqing Jin
University of Texas at Dallas
Jin is an assistant professor in the department of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas and leads a research group that tackles fluid mechanics problems through integrated laboratory experiments and theoretical models. His research focuses on fluid-structure-particle interaction issues, including wind energy, wave-structure interactions, flow control, flow sensing, and sediment particle transport, among others. Jin was awarded the Yee Fellowship in 2018 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Early Career Program award from the Army Research Office in 2024. Jin received his B.S. in naval architecture and ocean engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and both his M.S. and Ph.D. from the department of mechanical science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2015 and 2019, respectively.

Leixin Ma
Arizona State University

Ma is an assistant professor in the mechanical and aerospace engineering program at Arizona State University. Her research expertise includes fluid-structure interaction of offshore structures and machine learning-assisted simulation and inverse design. Ma's research goal is to combine data-driven and physics-based approaches to develop digital twins that reduce and prevent environmentally induced damage to offshore structures, ranging from renewable energy systems to offshore aquaculture systems. She was previously a postdoctoral fellow in the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCLA, and her past research has influenced the development of Shear7, one of the leading software tools in the offshore industry for predicting vortex-induced vibration. In 2023, her research team received the American-Made Water Prize from the U.S. Department of Energy. Ma received her B.Sc. in naval architecture and ocean engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2015, and both her S.M. and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from MIT in 2017 and 2021, respectively.

Weina Meng
Stevens Institute of Technology

Meng is an assistant professor in civil, environmental, and ocean engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology and the founding director of its Advanced Concrete Technology Lab, specializing in sustainable and resilient civil engineering materials. Her research focuses on four areas: advancements in ultra-high-performance concrete, pioneering waste utilization and CO2 sequestration in low/negative carbon concrete, developing biomimetic concrete with high specific flexural strength and toughness, and utilizing artificial intelligence for enhanced concrete design and characterization. Meng received recognition with the NSF CAREER award in 2021 and being named among the World's Top 2% Scientists by Stanford University in 2023. She was also honored as 2020 Educator of the Year by the ASCE New Jersey Section. Her academic contributions include 70 peer-reviewed journal articles, a U.S. patent, two edited books, over 4,500 citations, and an H-index of 34. Meng obtained her B.S. and M.S. in civil engineering from Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu, China, and Ph.D. from Missouri University of Science and Technology.

Jian Shi
University of Houston

Shi is an assistant professor in the department of engineering technology and department of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Houston. His research focuses on creating innovative engineering and technology solutions to facilitate a balanced and orderly energy transition. His research expertise includes deep decarbonization of the electric energy grid, low-/zero-carbon multi-energy hubs, maritime transportation electrification, energy equity and justice, and smart grid cybersecurity. Prior to joining the University of Houston, he was an assistant research professor at the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems and an adjunct faculty at the department of computer science and engineering at Mississippi State University from 2015 to 2018. Shi has published over 35 peer-reviewed journal articles and 40 conference proceedings. He has received several awards, including the NSF CAREER Award (2024), Utilities Technology Council Emerging Leaders (Class of 2024), and Faculty Research Excellence Award at the University of Houston (2022). He received his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering in 2014 from Mississippi State University.

Junbo Zhao
University of Connecticut

Zhao is the Castleman Term Assistant Professor in Engineering Innovation, director of DOE's Northeast University Cybersecurity Center for Advanced and Resilient Energy Delivery, and associate director of the Eversource Energy Center at the University of Connecticut. He is also a research scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. His research interests are in power system modeling, estimation, security, dynamics and stability, uncertainty quantification, renewable energy integration and control, and machine learning. He has published four chapters and more than 200 peer-reviewed journals and conference papers. He is the recipient of multiple recognitions, including , the 2023 AAUP Research Excellence Award-Early Career, and the 2024 IEEE PES Technical Committee Distinguished Individual Service Award. He received his B.S. in electrical engineering from Southwest Jiaotong University and his Ph.D. from Virginia Tech in 2018.

The Human Health and Community Resilience Track fellows are:

Ebrahim Ahmadisharaf
Florida State University

Ahmadisharaf is currently an assistant research professor in the Center for Resilient Infrastructure and Disaster Response Center and department of civil and environmental engineering at Florida State University. His work primarily focuses on predicting floods and nonpoint source pollution under a changing climate and land cover to support decisions related to civil infrastructure design, flood mitigation, and water pollution control. Prior to joining FSU, he was a hydrologic scientist at Danish Hydraulic Institute and a postdoctoral associate in the department of biological systems engineering at Virginia Tech. He has worked in industry as an engineer on issues related to flood mitigation, hydrologic analyses, and urban stormwater. He holds an M.Sc. and a B.Sc. in civil engineering from Sharif University of Technology and a Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering from Tennessee Technological University.

Heng Cai
Texas A&M University

Cai is an assistant professor in the department of geography at Texas A&M University, where she leads the GIScience for Resilience Research Group. She leverages geospatial data science approaches to study the social and geographic determinants of disaster and health vulnerability. Her research aims to achieve a deep understanding of the geospatial aspect of the interactions between people and their environments and how the interactions shape social-environmental vulnerability and resilience to extreme disaster events and climate changes, primarily for the Gulf of Mexico communities. Cai holds a B.E. from the China University of Geosciences and an M.S. in cartography and geographic information science from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. She earned her Ph.D. in environmental sciences from Louisiana State University.

Simone Domingue
Tulane University's ByWater Institute

Domingue is a research assistant professor at Tulane University's ByWater Institute. Her work engages sociological theories of environmental planning and governance, environmental justice, and co-production to chart a more equitable path toward climate and disaster resilience. Domingue is currently collaborating with communities across coastal Louisiana on several grant-funded projects to co-develop empirically supported climate adaptation strategies that prioritize equity for historically marginalized and disproportionately impacted groups of people. She holds a B.S. in food science, health promotion, and nutrition from Mississippi State University, an M.S. in environmental sciences from Louisiana State University, and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Jennifer Lawrence
University of Virginia
Lawrence is an assistant professor in the department of urban + environmental planning at University of Virginia. Her research explores systems-change for disaster resilience and health equity by examining contradictions within environmental governance, particularly in extractive geographies. Through critical and creative methods, Lawrence's scholarship provides insight into interconnected systems of power and decision-making that impact people and place from frontline communities to global ecosystems. She is co-founder of FERN: The Feminist Environmental Research Network and works as a professor of practice with the Center for Leadership in Global Sustainability at Virginia Tech where she teaches courses on resource management and sustainability strategies. Lawrence holds dual B.A.s in political science and modern languages and literature from Christopher Newport University, an M.S. in international political economy from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a Ph.D. in social, political, ethical, and cultural thought from Virginia Tech, where her research addressed the production of and response to disaster through a study of Deepwater Horizon.

LaToya O'Neal

University of Florida

O'Neal is an assistant professor and extension health and wellness specialist in the department of family, youth and community sciences at the University of Florida. She also serves as the state program leader for health extension at the university's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. O'Neal is an expert in community-based approaches to advance rural and minority health. Her research examines social, cultural, and environmental determinants of health behaviors, lifestyle-related conditions, and comorbidities among health disparities populations. She currently works with communities to develop, test, and evaluate the effectiveness of tailored, multilevel interventions designed to increase community capacity to support optimal health. She aims to build upon her current work in coastal communities by examining the role of environmental health and severe weather events on community resilience and community health. O'Neal earned her B.A. in psychology from Tougaloo College, her M.A. in counseling psychology from Assumption University, and her Ph.D. in medical sociology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Khalid Osman
Stanford University

Osman is an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and a Center Fellow, by courtesy, at the Woods Institute for the Environment. Osman also holds faculty affiliations at Stanford University's King Center for Global Development and Center for the Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. His research focuses on the operationalization of equity and justice in the provision of infrastructure services, specifically employing qualitative and quantitative methods to develop novel frameworks at the intersection of the natural, built, and social environment. Currently, he is concentrated on water sector infrastructure, working to develop consistent and measurable definitions of water equity, frameworks for equity in the adoption of new water technologies, and exploring socio-technical solutions to sanitation justice challenges in rural communities. He earned his B.S. from the University of Portland and his M.S. and Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering from the University of Texas at Austin with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Millennium Scholars Graduate Fellowship and a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship.

Francisca Santana
University of Washington

Santana is an assistant professor in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington. She studies the social and psychological processes underpinning conservation and adaptation behavior in a climate changing world. Her research investigates topics such as the social nature of wildfire smoke protective-health decisions in the U.S. West, coral reef conservation behavior in Hawaiʻi, and coastal community resilience and climate adaptation in southeastern Louisiana. Much of her work is community-engaged and aims to co-produce science in partnership with local and Indigenous communities. Santana is also co-leading a project partnered with the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe and Louisiana SeaGrant to design a network of living shorelines for climate resilience. Santana received her B.A. in history from Yale University, M.Sc. in coastal marine science and management from University of California, Santa Barbara, and Ph.D. in environment and resources from Stanford University.

The National Academies' Gulf Research Program is an independent, science-based program founded in 2013 as part of legal settlements with the companies involved in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. It seeks to enhance offshore energy system safety and protect human health and the environment by catalyzing advances in science, practice, and capacity to generate long-term benefits for the Gulf of Mexico region and the nation. The program has $500 million for use over 30 years to fund grants, fellowships, and other activities in the areas of research and development, education and training, and monitoring and synthesis.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions related to science, engineering, and medicine. They operate under an 1863 congressional charter to the National Academy of Sciences, signed by President Lincoln.

Contact:

Pete Nelson, Director of Public Engagement and Communications
Gulf Research Program
Email: [email protected]