Maryam Kouhirostami
My name is Maryam Kouhirostami, I am a Ph.D. candidate at the Powell Center for construction and environment. My research interests include sustainable construction and industrialized construction. Currently I am serving as an instructor for the "International Sustainable development Course". My background is in architectural engineering and I have more than 5 years professional experience in the design and construction field.
Nancy Clark
Nancy Clark is Director of the UF Center for Hydro-generated Urbanism (UF|CHU), an international initiative promoting prospective studies of adaptation, resiliency, environmental justice and asset preservation of waterway cities. She also serves as Program Director for UF School of Architecture’s MSAS Master’s Degree Concentrations in Sustainability and Regenerative Practices. She is currently Interim Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education and Facilities. Clark teaches courses in architectural design, urban design, and resilience planning. Her interdisciplinary and collaborative project-based research in urban resilience and development for coastal and fluvial cities has been recognized internationally through exhibitions, awards and lectures presented globally including Mexico, Brazil, Italy, South Africa, France, Colombia, and the US. She is editor of Urban Waterways: Evolving Paradigms for Hydro-Based Urbanisms, a UNESCO series publication investigating the environmental, cultural, and economic future of cities on the water in the 21st century. She leads the Sustainable Settlements, Water Management and Renewable Energy Design Lab and is a member of the Project Leadership Team for Puerto Rico Re_Start International Research Project and Workshops an ongoing initiative that focuses on the preservation of natural resources and reconsideration of existing settlement paradigms toward a more prosperous and sustainable future for Puerto Rico investigated through interdisciplinary inter-institutional collaborations. Clark was a scientific committee member for the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) 18th National Conference and Global Forum on Science Policy and the Environment and served as Chair of the NCSE Global Forum Symposium “Designing Urban Resilience beyond the Science: The Project of the Future”. She was Chief Curator and contributor to Florida 3.0: Reinventing our Future, an exhibition at the Miami Center for Architecture and Design based upon ongoing research projects by members of the CHU who are studying the history and future of Florida’s water -based settlements and hydro-environments within the broader context of new paradigms for the evolution of water based communities.
Anne Ray
Anne Ray is the manager of the Florida Housing Data Clearinghouse at University of Florida's Shimberg Center for Housing Studies. She directs the Center's statewide Rental Market Study and has performed research on preservation of assisted rental housing, public housing, the housing needs of persons with disabilities, farmworker housing, and states' implementation of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. Previously, she worked for the Family Housing Fund in Minneapolis. Ms. Ray holds a Bachelors degree from the University of Michigan and a Master's degree in Urban Planning and Policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
William O'Dell
William O'Dell is the Director of the Shimberg Center for Housing Studies. Research in the Shimberg Center focuses on housing policy and planning, particularly in the area of affordable housing for Florida residents. The Center provides data and applied research to state agencies, planners, the housing industry, non-profits, and others involved in shaping housing policy in Florida. Current projects include documenting housing market conditions and affordable housing needs in the state's counties, cities, and neighborhoods, supporting the development of energy-efficient and healthy homes. Another area of focus examines housing within the state in relation to climate resilience and disaster preparedness and recovery. Before coming to the Shimberg Center, Mr. O'Dell was a policy analyst at the University of Florida's Bureau of Economic and Business Research. He has been heavily involved in Florida's local and state government issues for several years. His local government experience includes capital improvement planning, housing, and impact fees.
Alexis Thomas
Alexis Thomas, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, is the Director of GeoPlan Center.
GeoPlan, Geo-Facilities Planning and Information Center, was established in 1984 as a response to local and statewide needs for a teaching and research environment in GIS (geographic information systems). Current projects include the Florida Geographic Library, Efficient Transportation Decision Making, Signal Four Analytics, Military Grid Reference System, Sea Level Scenario Sketch Planning Tool, and Florida 2070.
Nikola Marinčić
Nikola Marinčić, assistant professor, is in the University of Florida School of Architecture. At ETH Zurich, he has been a lecturer of Digital Architectonics and the doctoral program coordinator at the Institute of Technology in Architecture. He graduated as an architect in Serbia and later obtained a Master of Advanced Studies degree at ETH Zurich, where he studied the philosophy of technology and computer-aided architectural design. During his postgraduate studies, Nikola worked for one year as a guest researcher at the Future Cities Laboratory, an interdisciplinary research program of the Singapore ETH Centre for Global Environmental Sustainability. He was awarded the ETH Medal of distinction for an outstanding doctoral dissertation on computational models in architecture. Nikola investigates the relationship between Architecture and Information Technology, especially the challenges Artificial Intelligence poses to the field. His monograph "Computational Models in Architecture," published by Birkhäuser/De Gruyter in 2019, celebrates abstract, spectral model-thinking and opens multiple perspectives on how digitally literate architects could reinvent their field in the digital age.
Margaret Portillo
Margaret Portillo is professor and associate dean in the College of Design, Construction and Planning at the University of Florida. She focuses on college-wide research and strategic initiatives in this role, including AI development. Previously she was the chair of the Department of Interior Design. Meg earned a PhD in design studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Portillo is a Fellow of the Interior Design Educators Council (IDEC). As a researcher, she leverages mixed methods to explore design innovation and environmental color. Human-centered design research by Portillo, her colleagues, and students has received a string of awards from IDEC and EDRA and has contributed to a series of evidence-based research webinars for ASID and the Association of College and Research Libraries. Also, Portillo enjoys high-impact scholarly service. As editor-in-chief of the Journal of Interior Design, Portillo and the JID board elevated the journal’s reach, readership, and ranking. She also has served on juries for IIDA and IDEC national competitions. CIDA awarded Portillo with its highest commendation: The Keith Hooks Excellence Award. Leadership on the FIDER Research Council and the CIDA standards project informed a significant accreditation standard revision for interior design education. The Florida Educational Fund gave Dr. Portillo the Jones Mentor Award for outstanding advising of African American doctoral students, historically underrepresented in their academic disciplines and professions.
Chimay Anumba
Chimay Anumba is professor and dean, College of Design, Construction and Planning at the University of Florida. He holds a PhD in civil engineering from the University of Leeds, UK, and a DSc in Construction Engineering and Informatics from Loughborough University, UK. He previously was head of the Department of Architectural Engineering at Penn State. Chimay is well known globally for seminal contributions on the innovative use of advanced computing techniques to address complex problems in design and construction. He has more than 500 publications, including 20 books and over 200 archival journal papers on aspects of construction engineering and informatics. His research has received support worth more than $150 million from a variety of sources. He has received numerous honors for his work and has held visiting professorships on four continents. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers; the Institution of Structural Engineers; and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands) in 2007 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK) in 2012. ASCE recognized him with its Computing in Civil Engineering Award in 2018.
Shabboo Valipoor
Shabboo Valipoor, Ph.D., EDAC, is an assistant professor of Interior Design at the College of Design, Construction and Planning. The focus of her research is on the impact of the built environment on human health and safety, particularly in the context of healthcare facilities and environments for aging and disabilities. She is currently working on projects that aim to (1) improve the quality of care in acute care settings by providing supportive environments for healthcare professionals and (2) minimize environmental risks to independent living for older adults with age-associated impairments. She has collaborated with scholars across disciplines on projects supported by the Department of Veterans Affairs, National Science Foundation, Academy of Architecture for Health, and the American Society of Interior Designers. Her current teaching focuses on inclusive design in the built environment, healthcare design, and computer applications.
Timothy Murtha
Dr. Murtha holds a joint appointment with the College of Design, Construction and Planning and the Center for Latin American Studies. He is an anthropologist, landscape archaeologist and design educator with over twenty years of research studying settlement patterns and landscape history in the lowlands of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. He is a founding faculty member of the Florida Institute of Built Environment Resilience and his research investigates the coupled natural human systems dynamics of settlement and land use, relying on advanced geospatial tools. Dr. Murtha studied at the University of Central Florida, before completing his MA and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the Pennsylvania State University. For thirteen years, Dr. Murtha taught in the Stuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, recently directing the Hamer Center for Community Design (2014 – 2017). Dr. Murtha has conducted sponsored interdisciplinary research in Mexico, Guatemala and Belize, as well as participating in research in Northern Europe and North America.
Hui Zou
Fellows
Fellow of the Garden and Landscape Studies, Dumbarton Oaks (Harvard University), 2001-2002
Kenneth and Nelly Fung Fellow, Asian Cultural Council (New York), 2012-13
Research Fields
Architectural history, garden history, architectural philosophy, comparative cultural studies in the built environment
Book Publications (single author)
A Jesuit Garden in Beijing and Early Modern Chinese Culture (2011)
Suipian yu bizhao (Fragments and Mirroring) (2012)
The Chinese translation Jianzhu zai ai zhishang (2018) of Alberto Perez-Gomez’s book Built Upon Love
Bryan Franz
Dr. Bryan Franz is an Associate Professor of Construction Management at the University of Florida. He is a researcher and educator dedicated to improving the project delivery process in the building construction industry. Specifically, he studies organizational strategies for assembling, managing, and evaluating successful project teams. These strategies include the use of collaborative delivery methods, such as Design-Build and Integrated Project Delivery, the modeling of project communication networks, and the identification of the relational competencies needed for future project managers. He has published over 30 journal articles, technical reports and conference proceedings in this field. Dr. Franz is the currently the instructor for Introduction to Construction Management (BCN 3027C) and Construction Capstone (BCN 4787C). He earned a B.S. (2005), M.S. (2011) and Ph.D. (2014) in Architectural Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University.
Robert Ries
Sustainability (Building Energy, Building Materials, Built Environment Resilience, Renewable Energy, Smart Buildings/Cities Sustainable Architecture and Design, Sustainable Construction, Sustainable Technology)
The spatial dimensions of work range from assessing indoor environmental quality in spaces to modeling water resources regionally to modeling the potential for ground-level ozone formation nationally. The dimensions of interest range from the health and performance of people, life cycle pollution generation and resources, and life cycle financial performance, sometimes all at once, based on a foundation of ethics. Research indicates that of the range of environmental impacts we generally consider in sustainability and resilience, biodiversity has been impacted to the greatest extent, and in my opinion, biodiversity impact is an under-appreciated environmental impact of the built environment.
Special Fields Green Building, Sustainable Development, Life Cycle Assessment in the Construction Process Employers University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Energy and National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Colorado, Brooklyn Design and Fabrication AC3D Architectural Firm Publications More than 80 publications in the area of life cycle assessment and optimization, green building construction, and environmental impact assessment of buildings.
Zhong-Ren Peng
Education
Ph.D., Urban Studies, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, 1994 M.S., Economics, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, 1994 M.S., Geography, Graduate School of University of Science and Technology of China, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, 1986 B.S., Geography, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, People’s Republic of China, 1983
Areas of Expertise
• Geospatial Information Systems and Analysis
• Information Technology for Planning
• International Planning
• Landscape Planning Using GIS
• Transportation
Teaching
URP 6276: Internet Geographic Information Systems URP 6821: Transportation and Land Use Modeling URP 6905: Planning for Climate Change URP 6905: Urban Planning and Design Issues in China Research Interests Transportation and land use planning, modeling and policy Planning for climate change Information technology for planning International/China planning
Ruth Steiner
Ruth L. Steiner, Ph.D. is a professor and director of the Center for Health and the Built Environment in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning and an affiliate faculty in the School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE) and the Transportation Institute (UFTI) at the University of Florida. Her research focuses on the coordination of transportation and land use, with a particular focus on planning for all modes of transportation and its impact on communities, the environment, and public health. Her current research is on the impact of school siting, school transportation and land development patterns on children’s travel, transportation and aging, the changing pattern of travel among millennials, impacts of new transportation technologies on transportation systems, equity in planning, and the incorporation of risk into long-range transportation planning. She is co-author of Energy Efficiency and Human Activity: Global Trends and Prospects (Cambridge University Press, 1992) and author of over one hundred book chapters, journal articles, reviews and research reports. She has served on the Pedestrian Committee, Transportation and Land Development Committee and Transportation History Committee of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) and the Scientific Committee of the World Congress on Transportation Research Society (WCTRS). She teaches courses in Transportation Policy and Planning (URP6716), Transportation and Land Use Coordination (URP6711), Planning Research Design (URP6203), Health and the Built Environment (URP6526), Urban Planning Project (URP6341) and Ecological Issues in Sustainable Design (DCP6205). After earning her AB in History from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, Ruth worked as a computer programmer and systems analyst for First Wisconsin Bank (now a part of US Bank). During this time she earned a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She later earned a Masters of City Planning (MCP) from the University of California, Berkeley. She then worked for two years as a policy analyst for the Vermont Public Service Board (now the Vermont Public Utility Commission). She returned to the University of California, Berkeley, where she completed her Ph. D. in City and Regional Planning.
Raymond Issa
R. Raymond Issa, Ph.D., J.D., P.E., F.ASCE, API is an engineer, lawyer and computer scientist and UF Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Advanced Construction Information Modeling (CACIM), Rinker School of Construction Management, University of Florida. Raymond specializes and teaches in the areas of BIM/VDC, AI/ML, industrialized construction, construction management, construction law, information technology, ontologies and semantics and structures and foundations and is an advocate for technology integration in the AECO industry.
Raymond is in demand as a keynote speaker on BIM, AR/VR, technology integration, manufactured construction, resiliency and creativity and innovation. Raymond has completed over $8 million in grants; his authorship includes over 350 publications and he has chaired over 350 Masters and over 50 Ph.D. committees. Raymond was elected an ASCE Fellow in 2009; received the ASCE Computing in Civil Engineering Award in 2012; was elected to Pan American Academy of Engineering (API) in 2014 and received the 2015 Best Paper Award from the ASCE Journal of Construction Engineering and Management (JCEM).
Raymond currently serves as the Chief Editor of the ASCE Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering; on the Editorial Board of Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management (ECAM); as VP for the North American Region of the Pan American Federation of Engineering Societies (UPADI); as Chair of the International Society of Computing in Civil and Building Engineering (ISCCBE) Board of Directors, as Chair of the Academic interoperability Coalition (AiC) and as Member of the Board of Directors of the National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER).
Martha Kohen
After graduating from the Universities of Uruguay and Cambridge England, and 20 years of professional practice, Architecture and Urban Design in South America, joined UF as Director of the SOA-DCP in 2003. Currently teaching upper division and graduate levels. I co direct the Center for Hydro-generated Urbanism since 2016, focusing on the changing climate and Sea Level Rise impacts in Urban environments through grants, courses and Master thesis. In the aftermath of 2017 Hurricanes Irma and Maria, I created the Puerto Rico Re-Start program promoting Workshops, Conferences and Research in support for a Resilient recovery in the Island, engaging the two main PR Universities with Collaborative agreements, as well a NGOs , professionals and State Agencies. Since 2015 I represent USA as Senior Partner in the UNESCO Chair in Sustainable Urban Quality and Culture (Rome) and perform as visiting professor to La Sapienza University of Rome.
Cleary Larkin
Cleary Larkin is a licensed architect with specialized practice experience in historic preservation and community planning. She holds a professional degree in Architecture from the University of Arkansas, a Master of Science in Historic Preservation from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. with a concentration in Urban Planning from the University of Florida.
She has worked as an architect and a preservation planner at Frazier Associates in Staunton, Virginia; Beyer Blinder Belle in New York City and for the City of Gainesville, Florida. Her practitioner experience includes adaptive re-use, restoration and rehabilitation; design and project management of architectural projects from programming through construction; research and writing for Historic Structure Reports, National Register nominations, rehabilitation tax credits, and design guidelines; design review in historic districts; new design within historic contexts; and use of fiscal incentives for redevelopment.
Dr. Larkin’s dissertation, Expanding the Historic Preservation Narrative: The intersections of planning, preservation and social context in the Vieux Carré Historic District designation, explored the collaboration between architects, preservation activists and planner Harland Bartholomew to create the New Orleans’ first Comprehensive Plan in 1929 and first legislation for the French Quarter historic district in 1925 and 1937, respectively.
Prior to her role as Acting Director of UF’s Historic Preservation program, Dr. Larkin was Program Coordinator for the newly formed Florida Resilient Cities (FRC) program at UF’s Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER). The first FRC project focused on sustainable recovery and growth of Port St. Joe, a historic mill town in the Florida panhandle, damaged by Hurricane Michael in 2018.
Dr. Larkin’s research interests include the intersections of architecture, preservation and planning, both in historical and contemporary practice; historic land-use decisions as a source of inequity in communities; and historic preservation as a social justice practice. She currently teaches Intro to History and Theory of Historic Preservation at the Graduate and Undergraduate levels, and two courses in the summer field course at Preservation Institute Nantucket (PIN): World Heritage Research and Stewardship, and Preservation Policy and Current Topics
Kathryn Frank
Dr. Frank specializes in planning for sustainability, resilience, and equity. Specific areas include environmental, coastal, rural, regional, neighborhood, and participatory planning. She is the director of the Florida Center for Innovative Communities where she conducts applied, action-research projects to simultaneously assist communities and pilot test innovative planning approaches. At the University of Florida, she has led $1 million in funded research projects, including grants from the National Estuarine Research Reserve System Science Collaborative, Florida Sea Grant, and the inaugural UF-Gainesville Research Award, with the latter project receiving an Award of Excellence from the Florida Chapter of the American Planning Association. Her recent publications have appeared in the Journal of Planning Education and Research and Planning Theory and Practice, and as book chapters for Routledge. Dr. Frank teaches courses in Urban and Regional Planning in the on-campus and online master’s programs. Specific courses include URP 6421 Environmental Land Use Planning and Management, and URP 6931 Community Engagement. She also advises doctoral students and teaches a college-wide course, DCP 6931 Doctoral Core 3 (dissertation preparation and writing for publication). She is a long-standing member of the college’s Sustainability Governing Board, and she has taught a course for the undergraduate major Sustainability and the Built Environment (SBE). Currently, she regularly advises SBE senior capstone projects. Dr. Frank received a doctorate in City and Regional Planning from Georgia Tech, and a master’s degree in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Oregon. Her undergraduate majors were chemical engineering (Georgia Tech) and mathematics (University of Georgia). She previously worked as a planning consultant in Oregon and an environmental engineer in North Carolina. In the distant past, she was an officer in the U.S. Navy and taught at the Nuclear Power School in Orlando (the school’s site is now a traditional neighborhood development, Baldwin Park).
Mike Volk
My work is focused on a variety of topics related to climate change and resilient design, including regional conservation planning as the Associate Director of the Center for Landscape Conservation Planning, community resiliency as a partner with Florida Resilient Cities, and as a founding member of the Climate-wise Landscape Initiative focused on providing actionable climate change information for landscape architects and educators. Bio: Michael Volk is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture, Associate Director of the University of Florida Center for Landscape Conservation Planning, and a Florida registered Landscape Architect (currently inactive). He has a Master’s Degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Florida and a degree in Architecture from the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. Michael currently teaches courses in planting design, landscape management and ecology, environmental and ecological policy, and ecological issues and sustainability in collaboration with faculty in the Departments of Landscape Architecture and Urban and Regional Planning. Michael’s work with the Center for Landscape Conservation Planning (http://conservation.dcp.ufl.edu/) includes applied research with conservation partners throughout Florida on land use, regional conservation planning, and urban green infrastructure; the impacts of sea level rise on natural resources and coastal communities; and climate change adaptation strategies and information needs for landscape architecture students and professionals (https://dcp.ufl.edu/landscapechange/). Michael is also a partner with Florida Resilient Cities (https://dcp.ufl.edu/frc/), an initiative which works with communities across Florida to be more prepared for and resilient to increased risk and future changes.
Tom Hoctor
Tom Hoctor is director of the Center for Landscape Conservation Planning at the University of Florida. He has an undergraduate degree in History and Science from Harvard University and a Masters and Ph.D. in Conservation Biology and Landscape Ecology from the University of Florida.
Dr. Hoctor is an expert on GIS applications for identifying conservation priorities and implementation actions for maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services including focal species habitat modeling, reserve design, wildlife corridors, recommendations for expanding protected lands to address climate change impacts, and conservation strategies for ensuring effective conservation in a future with continuing conflicts with land use change and habitat loss. He has served as principal or co-principal investigator on many regional-scale conservation analysis and planning projects in Florida and the U.S. His current projects include the Florida Ecological Greenways Network and Florida Wildlife Corridor, the Critical Lands and Waters Identification Project, the Identification of Florida Air Force Installation Conservation Priorities project, and working with the National Wildlife Refuge Association and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Regional Landscape Conservation Design projects in Florida and the Gulf Coast.
Tom teaches the undergraduate and graduate region planning GIS studios (LAA 4356 and LAA 6656), Landscape Management (LAA 2352), the Conservation Ecology Module of the online Ecological Issues in Sustainability course (DCP 6205), and Directed Study (LAA 6905) courses related to Conservation Biology, Landscape Ecology, ecological connectivity, green infrastructure, etc. upon request with specific graduate students.
Abhinav Alakshendra
Dr. Alakshendra’s research interests are mainly focused around the areas of urbanization, international development, and applied microeconomics in Southeast Asia. He is a trained Development Economist who uses cutting edge empirical research methods to understand complex socioeconomic problems. He is a recipient of many prestigious research grants including UKAID, Land and Housing Institute, Korea, and Florida Department of Transportation.
Bradley Walters
Mr. Walters teaches studio design, drawing, materials coursework, and architectural detailing. His current research is centered on high-performance zero-energy buildings, within a broader context of social, artistic, and cultural production. This work engages building science, thermal/energy modeling, climatic responses, and materiality. Secondary areas of research include teaching methods, pedagogy, and visual communications.
Yan Wang
Dr. Wang’s research concerns resilient, smart, and safe cities. She studies the resilience of humans and the built environment to natural hazards and public health crises. She also develops data-driven intelligent system to enable agility in disaster and emergency response, and to detect small-scale crises for urban safety. Her research also engages evidence-based planning for urban resilience and data-informed infrastructure planning for future cities. Dr. Wang’s expertise includes multimodal data analytics (including natural language processing and computer vision), complex network analysis, spatiotemporal analyses, and real-time geo-visualization. Her interdisciplinary projects have been funded by the National Science Foundation (Awards #2028012, #1951816, #1760645), Natural Hazards Center, DCP Research Initiative SEED Grant and Global Fellow Program Seed Grant.
Shelia Bosch
Dr. Sheila Bosch is an assistant professor and graduate coordinator for the Department of Interior Design. For more than two decades, Sheila has been engaged in research exploring the relationships between environmental design and human well-being, primarily in healthcare and educational environments. Healthcare design research has investigated environments serving patients of all ages, from birth to the very end of life, including intensive care units, medical-surgical units, emergency departments, behavioral health units and skilled nursing facilities. In 2014, Sheila was honored to receive the national-level HCD10 top researcher award for her contributions to healthcare design research. Her current research focuses on how the design of healthcare spaces may help reduce stress and support mindfulness among healthcare workers. Research on learning environment design has included investigations in both K-12 and higher education environments, including an externally funded investigation of mixed-use learning environments at the university level. Sheila teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses, all of which include a research component. For undergraduates, she regularly team-teaches a senior design studio in which students develop innovative healthcare spaces, oftentimes working with design practitioners. Sheila also teaches both undergraduate and graduate level environment-behavior courses where students explore the complex relationships between the environment (built or natural) and the people who occupy those environments. Other graduate courses taught include Readings in Design Studies and Research Methods in Interior Design. Prior to UF, Sheila served as the Director of Research for Gresham Smith, a global design firm headquartered in the southeastern US. Having earned her PhD in 2004 from Georgia Tech’s College of Architecture, Sheila also hold an MS (life science, environmental toxicology) and a BS (science education), both from the University of Tennessee.
David Rifkind
David Rifkind joined the UF faculty July 1, 2021, as Director of the School of Architecture after 14 years at Florida International University. Trained as an architect and as an architectural historian, Rifkind studies urbanism and architecture in Ethiopia from the late nineteenth century to the present. His current book project, Modern Ethiopia: Architecture, Urbanism, and the Building of a Nation, incorporates field research in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti with archival research in Ethiopia, Europe and the United States. His work in Ethiopia has been supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation and a residency at the American Academy in Rome as the inaugural Wolfsonian-FIU Affiliated Fellow.
Rifkind’s doctoral dissertation, Quadrante and the Politicization of Architectural Discourse in Fascist Italy, examined the complex interrelationships of modern architecture and state politics in Fascist Italy. The dissertation won the 2011 James Ackerman Prize for Architectural History from the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio in Vicenza, and was subsequently published as The Battle for Modernism in 2012 by the CISA Palladio and Marsilio Editori.
He has also won best article awards for essays published in the two flagship journals in architectural education and history, the Journal of Architectural Education (“Misprision of Precedent: Design as Creative Misreading”) and the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (“Gondar. Architecture and Urbanism for Italy’s Fascist Empire”). He curated the 2012 exhibition, Metropole/Colony: Africa and Italy, in the Wolfsonian-FIU Teaching Gallery at the Frost Art Museum, and in 2016 developed an exhibition with Professor Dawit Benti (EiABC), Contemporary Architecture in Ethiopia, which opened in Addis Ababa, Miami, and in the gallery of the architecture building at UF. In 2014, Ashgate published A Critical History of Contemporary Architecture, which he co-edited with Elie G. Haddad.
A practicing designer, Rifkind has worked to make environmental stewardship and community development the central focus of architectural practice in South Florida. In 2012 he completed a house in South Miami which served as a model of sustainable construction and environmental stewardship. He is currently working on two net-zero energy projects.
Roberto Rengel
Professor Rengel holds a Master in Interior Architecture degree from the University of Oregon and a Master of Architecture from Tulane University. He has worked for some of the most influential Interior Architecture firms in the United States including Gensler in California, and ASD in Florida. He transitioned to academia and spent 23 years at the University of Wisconsin – Madison before joining the University of Florida as professor and chair of the Department of Interior Design.
Professor Rengel’s research has focused on architectural interior space as well as the interaction between interior and exterior spaces and the application of biophilic principles to the design of interior environments. He has published two books, Shaping Interior Space and The Interior Plan.
Most of Rengel’s studio teaching has been in upper level studios focused on the workplace, hospitality, and educational environments. At the graduate level, he has taught the course Placemaking, focused on the principles and processes of creating environments with a strong sense of place.
Yi Luo
Yi Luo, PhD, PLA is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Florida. Prior to joining the University of Florida, Yi taught at Texas Tech University and Texas A&M University. Yi received her Bachelor of Architecture from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China, Master of Landscape Architecture from Utah State University, and PhD in Urban and Regional Science from Texas A&M University. Her areas of interest are landscape performance evaluation, sustainability assessment, performance evaluation metrics and methods, therapeutic landscapes, and stormwater management and low impact development. Yi’s research has been funded by various agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Landscape Architecture Foundation, and Jessie Ball DuPont.
Before pursuing her PhD at Texas A&M University, Yi practiced landscape architecture and architecture in multidisciplinary firms in the United States and China with efforts to promote green building and sustainable development. She is a licensed landscape architect (Utah).
Masoud Gheisari
Dr. Masoud Gheisari is an Associate Professor in the Rinker School of Construction Management at the University of Florida. He leads the Human-Centered Technology in Construction (HCTC) research lab: https://hctclabs.wixsite.com/hctclab. His research focuses on the theoretical and experimental investigation of human-robot interaction in construction and technology-supported education innovation. He earned his Ph.D. in Building Construction (2013) from the Georgia Institute of Technology. To date, he has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed papers in the fields of virtual/augmented/mixed reality (VR/AR/MR) and safe human-drone interaction in construction. His work has received support worth over $1.6m in grants from external funding agencies, including the National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Department of Labor, NIOSH’s Center for Construction Research and Training (CPWR), and ELECTRI International. Dr. Gheisari is the recipient of Associated Schools of Construction (ASC) International Outstanding Researcher Award (2021), ENR Southeast’s Top Young Professional (2020), UF DCP Undergraduate Faculty Teaching Award (2019), BCN Nancy Perry Teaching Award (2019), Russell J. Alessi ELECTRI International Early Career Award (2018), UF DCP Faculty Research Award (2018), ASC Southeast’s Excellence in Teaching Award (2018), and ASCE ExCEEd Fellowship (2015). He also serves as an Associate Editor for ASCE’s Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering.
Jules Bruck
Dr. Jules Bruck, RLA, joined the University of Florida College of Design, Construction and Planning on July 1, 2022, as director of the School of Landscape Architecture and Planning and chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture. She came to DCP from the University of Delaware, where she was professor and founding director of the landscape architecture program. In those roles, she taught capstone and design process studios and courses in creativity, field sketching and ecological planting design. She is a registered landscape architect and a SITES Accredited Professional (AP).
In April 2018, she co-founded the Coastal Resilience Design Studio (CRDS). This Delaware Sea Grant-funded collaboration brings together educators, students, scientists, citizen-scientists, engineers, designers, artists and other academic institutions in Delaware to study and respond to issues affecting the state’s coastlines and coastal communities. CRDS work focuses on coastal challenges that stem from historical decisions, human settlement, sea-level rise and necessary compliance with water quality mandates. The goal of CRDS is to team community members with interdisciplinary experts and students to develop new strategies and manage special cases that threaten coastal communities. Ultimately, the studio hopes to drive policy to benefit coastal communities through more sustainable land use, planning and education.
The CRDS was honored as the 2021 Coastal Estuarine Research Federation’s student contest winner. Their project, Carbon in the Tidewater, focused on Hampton, Virginia, which has a low elevation, high rate of land subsidence and intense storm surge risk. Students explored the use of the Global Carbon Market to finance self-regenerating nature-based coastal infrastructure. This project also received an honor award from the Pennsylvania-Delaware chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects.
In the fall of 2021, Bruck became the co-director of UD’s Gerard J. Mangone Climate Science and Policy Hub. Over the past year, the Climate Change Hub developed the capacity of UD faculty and students to research and enhance courses with science-based climate change content by providing competitive awards for scholarship and teaching.
Her research interests are coastal resilience, green infrastructure and public perception of sustainable landscape practices. She is the principal investigator for a collaborative project called Developing Engineering Practices using Ecosystem Design Solutions for Future Army (DEEDS). This four-year project will allow her diverse team to research shellfish-based living shoreline solutions. Bruck has a Ph.D. from Texas A&M University.
Lingqian (Ivy) Hu
Lingqian (Ivy) Hu is a professor in Urban and Regional Planning who joined the University of Florida College of Design, Construction and Planning on July 1, 2022. She serves as the chair of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning as well as the associate director of the School of Landscape Architecture and Planning.
Professor Hu’s work has focused on the interrelationship between transportation and land use, with an emphasis on equity. She has extensive knowledge of real-world planning and policy efforts to promote just and prosperous cities, reduce socio-spatial inequity and enhance environmental justice and public health. Hu has been published extensively in prestigious urban planning and transportation journals, and has led more than $1 million funded research projects supported by the National Science Foundation and other agencies. One example of the impacts of her research is FlexRide Milwaukee, which pilots a new micro-transit service to address a long-term transportation gap in the Milwaukee region.
Before joining UF, Hu was a professor and the chair of the Urban Planning Department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She received her Ph.D. (of Policy, Planning and Development) and master’s (in Planning) degrees from the University of Southern California and her bachelor’s degree (in Planning) from Nanjing University. She worked as a planner at the Southern California Association of Governments (Los Angeles) and the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design (Shenzhen, China).
Robert Cox
As director, Robert leads the day-to-day operations of the Rinker School. He spends much of his time engaged with industry partners while supporting faculty, staff, and students in keeping the School as one of the most reputable construction management programs in the country while maintaining its global recognition.
Prior to his return to UF in July 2020, he served as a Senior Associate Dean for Globalization and Global Fellow at Purdue University. As senior associate dean, he was responsible for the overall strategic planning and execution of all international activities on behalf of the Purdue Polytechnic. He provided leadership for more than a dozen global collaborative partnerships across four continents. Robert was recognized with the Purdue’s 2019 Global Vision Award for his accomplishments in globalization.
He led the development of the European Alliance Strategic Partnership bringing together six university partners from Europe and the United States (four European and two US institutions) to foster increased collaboration in faculty mobility, student exchange, and research.
Prior to this role, he served as the Department Head of Building Construction Management from 2006 – 2012. From 1993-2006 Robert was the Associate Director / Director of Undergraduate Programs for the Rinker School of Building Construction at the University of Florida. He completed his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering – Construction Engineering and Management at Virginia Tech in 1994. His research interests include the application of technology, trust models, performance measurement, continuous improvement strategies, development of global strategic collaborative partnerships, and the development of increased intercultural capacity and global awareness among faculty and students.
Robert currently serves the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MOHESR) in the United Arab Emirates as an accrediting visitor for construction management and civil engineering programs.
He has been active in designing, implementing, and monitoring employee development, strategic quality management and continuous improvement programs within construction firms. He has given lectures on numerous construction management topics, such as; internet-based collaborative project management systems, continuous improvement, high performance management techniques, trust building, and globalization strategies throughout the world.
His current areas of research interest include the international construction project management, technology applications to construction management, internet based collaborative project management systems, employee training and development, Key Behavioral Indicators, Key Performance Indicators, and modeling the Return on Investment of Employee Training.
A three-time national award-winning teacher, Robert was selected the University of Florida’s Teacher of the Year for 1999-2000. He also received the College of Architecture Teacher of the Year Award in 1999-2000. In 2004, Robert was selected as one of five inaugural members of the University of Florida’s Academy of Distinguished Teaching Scholars.
Robert has taught construction management courses in planning and scheduling, estimating, and productivity improvement, cost analyses, construction project simulation, and global construction. Prior to academics and consulting, Robert served in many management roles within the construction industry. Robert continues to serve the construction industry as an active consultant, global strategic advisor, construction expert witness, as well as a provider of professional / executive coaching. Most recently his corporate training programs have focused on developing high performance teams through a learning cultural environment. He has worked with more than 160 master students and 25 doctoral candidates. Robert has authored more than 60 publications and reports.
Lisa Platt
Dr. Lisa Platt is the Interior Design department faculty and research representative for the University of Florida’s College of Design Construction and Planning Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER). Her work in research, student mentoring, and teaching is driven by the concept of designing and building proactively adaptive and human-centered environmental systems. Her career in healthcare design and systems improvement analysis has been to discover ways thoughtfully applied translational research can elicit practical innovation for improving human and system resilience. Her experience as a licensed Interior Designer and operations systems analyst has allowed her to collaborate with quality, health, safety, and environment management teams in high-risk industries in the U.S. and internationally. She has also had the benefit of being able to work with health system patients, rehabilitation, and long-term care resident groups around the world seeking ways to use human-centered design for improving individual and population health, safety, and wellbeing.
Dr. Platt’s current research focus is on using Artificial Intelligence and Human Factors for integrating Prevention through Design in healthcare environments. The primary purpose of this study is to explore potentials that predictive Systems Science and Engineering approaches have in informing reliable risk moderation and resilience optimization strategies for environment of care planning paradigms successful in moderating outside design basis system hazards.
Dr. Platt currently teaches the undergraduate Interior Finishes and Materials course and the DCP Doctoral Core 4 seminar focusing on assisting Ph.D. students in dissertation research conceptualization, writing, and leveraging for employment opportunities. She is also currently in the process of developing a graduate-level course for using applied quantitative methods and machine learning for design research.
Emre Tepe
Emre Tepe, Ph.D. has joined the University of Florida School of Landscape Architecture and Planning for the Fall 2019 semester as an Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning. Dr. Tepe works on modeling spatio-temporal dynamics of land development. He also builds statistical software and applications for large-scale data processing. His primary academic interests include Spatial Econometrics, Urban Simulation, Spatial Statistics & Analysis, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Optimization, Urban Economics, and Software Development.
After graduated from Istanbul Technical University with a bachelor’s degree in urban and regional planning and a master’s degree in urban planning. He was awarded a Fulbright Doctoral Scholarship to study at the Ohio State University and he earned his PhD in City and Regional Planning from the Ohio State University. He was also received Patricia Burgess Award for the Best Dissertation upon completion of his doctoral study.
Prior to beginning his position at the University of Florida, he worked as Assistant Professor at Gebze Technical University for almost 2 years, and as Adjunct Faculty in Kadir Has and Cankaya Universities for about a year in Turkey. He has taught courses on statistics, quantitative methods, urban economy, housing and planning practices. Currently, he teaches Quantitative Data Analysis for Planners, Urban Spatial Analysis, Urban Economy and Urban Planning Project courses in the Urban and Regional Planning graduate programs at UF.
Hassan Azad
Hassan Azad is a LEED AP BD + C and an AIA Associate. He is also a member of Noise Control Engineering (INCE-USA), International Building Performance Simulation Association, USA Chapter (IBPSA-USA), Society of Building Science Educators (SBSE), Building Technology Educators Society (BTES), Acoustical Society of America (ASA), and Audio Engineering Society (AES). He serves as a member for the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) Technical Committee (TC) on Architectural Acoustics, and Technical Specialty Group (TSG) on Computational Acoustics. Dr. Azad has received many awards, scholarships and grants and is a recipient of Robert Bradford Newman Medal for Excellence in Architectural Acoustics.
At the School of Architecture, Professor Azad teaches several undergraduate and graduate courses. He is also a University of Florida’s Doctoral Research Faculty and supervises doctoral and master’s degree seeking students. He teaches Environmental Technology I & II and graduate seminars on topics of Architectural and Environmental Acoustics.
Hassan Azad holds a B.Sc. in Architectural Engineering from the Iran University of Science and Technology and a M.Sc. in Low Energy Architecture from the University of Tehran. He graduated with a Ph.D. in design, construction, and planning from the School of Architecture of the University of Florida in 2018. Prior to his current appointment, Dr. Azad worked as an acoustical consultant in the San Francisco bay area for a year
Stathis G. Yeros
Dr. Stathis G. Yeros completed his Ph.D. in Architectural History, Theory and Society at the University of California, Berkeley, focusing on how space affects and is affected by struggles for social justice, focusing on queer and transgender cultures and politics. His recent article, “AIDS and the City: Bathhouses, Emplaced Empathy, and the Desexualization of San Francisco” (Urban History) examines how the iconographies of domesticity and death during the AIDS devastation changed contemporary urban homosexual politics. Dr. Yeros has published on queer and trans-of color spatial activism and on the subject of queer ecologies (with Chandra Laborde, UC Berkeley). He is currently working on his book manuscript, Queering Urbanism: Architecture, Embodiment, and Queer Citizenship. The book analyzes intersectional politics and cultural representations of gender, race, bodily ability and sexuality in queer and trans spaces. It uses the lens of queer insurgent citizenship to rework the meaning of diversity and inclusion in the built environment as a set of rights rather than accommodations. Yeros is also co-organizer of the ongoing Queer Ecological Imaginations working group, a collaborative platform seeking to address pernicious environmental injustices at a time of ecological collapse, which is supported by the Townsend Center for the Humanities, and Cal’s Center for Race and Gender. Prior to his Ph.D. Yeros earned a master’s of architecture from Berkeley, where he was the recipient of a yearlong Branner Traveling Fellowship. He also earned a master’s in Art History and Theater from the University of Glasgow, and practiced architecture in San Francisco.
Shenhao Wang
Dr. Shenhao Wang is an AI assistant professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning. Before coming here, he was a research scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Urban Mobility Lab and Human Dynamics Group in Media Lab. He focuses on developing interpretable and ethical deep-learning models to analyze individual decision-making. He synergizes discrete choice models and deep neural networks in travel demand modeling by opening up the “black box” deep learning with economic theory. Currently, he is designing socially-aware urban computing to incorporate unconventional data structures, seeking to generalize computational algorithms for urban studies. Wang completed his interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Computer and Urban Science at MIT in 2020. He received a bachelor’s in Economics from Peking University (2014) and a bachelor’s in architecture and law from Tsinghua University (2011), Master of Science in Transportation, and Master of City Planning from MIT (2017).
Jiayang Li
Dr. Jiayang Li is an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of landscape design and climate change adaptation. Her research tackles the challenge of creating landscape change that makes communities more resilient and is welcomed by community members. Currently, Jiayang draws on social science theories and methods to study everyday landscape experiences and community perceptions of novel nature-based solutions. She has published in multiple top-ranked journals including Landscape and Urban Planning and given guest lectures and conferences presentations nationally and internationally. Jiayang earned her Ph.D. in Environment and Sustainability and Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Michigan. She also holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Landscape Architecture from Tongji University in Shanghai, China. Before turning her primary focus to research, she had practiced in design firms including SmithGroup and AECOM.
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Walter Rodriguez Meyer
Walter Rodriguez Meyer is a landscape and urban designer, educator, and community organizer for climate justice. He is co-founder of Local Office Landscape and Urban Design (LOLA), based in Brooklyn, New York. The firm has garnered accolades from across the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, public policy, science, and art.
Walter teaches at Parsons The New School for Design and holds a BLA from the University of Florida and MLAUD at Harvard Graduate School of Design. Walter is also the executive director of the non-profit Coastal Marine Resource Center. Walter’s cultural collaborations include artists Ai Wei Wei, Agnes Denes, Michele Oka Doner, Justin Brice Guariglia, Rosie Perez, and Kara Walker. At a time when climate resilience projects are being planned and constructed, Walter’s built works at the scale of the neighborhood, city, and bioregion are some of the few examples that have withstood the planet’s most severe forces. The performance metrics from his built projects have shaped local and national policy. President Obama named Walter a White House Champion of Change.
The New York Times and The New Yorker documented how LOLA’s redesign for the soggy Miracle Mile district in Miami protected small business owners, absorbing the heaviest floods ever measured during hurricane Irma. Shops opened the next business day while the rest of the city took months to recover. Architectural Record documented how 30 businesses were protected from Hurricane Maria by the 2km Parque Litoral in Puerto Rico, where LOLA converted an industrial shore into dunes, wetlands, and an urban forest. Walter’s landscape-led city making approach is currently being implemented in state resiliency plans for New Jersey and Mississippi, and he is designing NYC’s first climate-proof fossil-fuel-free neighborhood named Arverne East in Rockaway Beach.
Dr. Eva Agapaki
Dr Agapaki is an Artificial Intelligence Assistant Professor in the Rinker School of Construction Management. She brings 7 years of academic and industry experiences in AI in civil engineering, infrastructure computer vision, Digital Twinning and automation in construction. She obtained her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2020, where her research pioneered the automated generation of geometric Digital Twins of existing industrial facilities from Lidar data at a commercially viable level. She conducted part of her PhD research at MIT and was awarded the U.S. National Academy of Engineering grant for addressing one of the 14 Grand Challenges in Engineering of our century. She also holds an MSc in Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering from UCLA and a BSc in Civil Engineering. She has extensive industry experience working as Innovation Lead at PTC Boston and AVEVA, where she led innovation projects on computer vision and deep learning applications in the manufacturing industry.
Dr. Karla Saldana Ochoa
Karla is an Ecuadorian architect and researcher with a Master's degree in Landscape Architecture. In June 2021, she finished her Ph.D. at ETH Zurich in the Department of Architecture with Profesor Ludger Hovestatd. Her dissertation investigated the combination of Artificial and Human Intelligence to have a precise and agile response to natural disasters. Since August 2021, Karla is a Tenure Track Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Florida; her teaching and research focus is applying Artificial Intelligence in architectural practices at building and urban scale
Maria Watson
Maria Watson is an Assistant Professor in the M.E. Rinker, Sr, School of Construction Management and the Shimberg Center for Housing Studies. Before coming to the University of Florida, she was a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning and Hazard Reduction Recovery Center at Texas A&M University. She has degrees in Urban Planning from The Ohio State University and Texas A&M University.
Dr. Watson’s research focuses on the factors impacting community recovery after disaster events, particularly interdependencies between infrastructure, housing, and businesses. She is particularly interested in the effectiveness of disaster programs and how these programs can be structured to better meet recovery needs. Watson has been a part of multiple interdisciplinary disaster recovery research efforts in Texas, Louisiana and North Carolina after Hurricanes Ike, Harvey, Matthew, Florence, Laura, and Delta. She has received grants from NSF, NOAA, and FEMA for her work.
Chaofeng Wang
Dr. Wang is specialized in computational mechanics, uncertainty and risk quantification, AI, and their applications in the natural and built environment. He joined the Rinker School as an Assistant Professor of Artificial Intelligence. Before that, he earned degrees in Engineering Mechanics and Civil Engineering from Central South University and Clemson University and worked as a postdoctoral scholar at University of California, Berkeley. He has broad interests in the intelligent automation of design, construction and management of the next generation infrastructure system. He also develops cyberinfrastructure that leverages stochastic physics-based simulation, AI and data mining techniques for multi-scale modeling of the built and natural environment under chronic and acute stressors, which leads to informed decision-makings. Particularly, his focal areas include foundational issues in AI, data, and material sciences, such as: mechanism of neural networks, uncertainty quantification and dimension reduction of data and models, explainability and interpretability of algorithms and inferences, constitutive modeling and design of future construction materials.
Evangalia Agapaki
Dr Agapaki is an Artificial Intelligence Assistant Professor in the Rinker School of Construction Management. She brings 7 years of academic and industry experiences in AI in civil engineering, infrastructure computer vision, Digital Twinning and automation in construction. She obtained her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2020, where her research pioneered the automated generation of geometric Digital Twins of existing industrial facilities from Lidar data at a commercially viable level. She conducted part of her PhD research at MIT and was awarded the U.S. National Academy of Engineering grant for addressing one of the 14 Grand Challenges in Engineering of our century. She also holds an MSc in Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering from UCLA and a BSc in Civil Engineering. She has extensive industry experience working as Innovation Lead at PTC Boston and AVEVA, where she led innovation projects on computer vision and deep learning applications in the manufacturing industry.
Stewart Sarkozy
Global Director, Urban, Disaster Risk Management, Resilience and Land Global Practice
Stewart is the Director of Strategic Partnerships and Development and advices the North American region at the Resilient Cities Network. He previously served as Senior Advisor in Resilience Finance, Acting Director for Europe and the Middle East, and Acting Director and City Relationship Manager for Latin America and the Caribbean. He was also the lead on the 100RC prize challenge, and Resilience Coordinator for Context Partners.
Stewart served on President Obama’s Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force and was Director of the Office for International and Philanthropic Innovation at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. He is the Senior Advisor and member of the advisory committee for several global programs including the Global Island Partnership, SeaAhead, The Policy Academies, and Small Island Organization [SMILO]. He is the founder of Precovery Labs, where creativity and community drive impact and awareness for clients such as Ocean Conservancy and the Intertribal Agriculture Council.
Jeff Carney
Jeff Carney is a registered architect and certified city planner working at the interface of housing, neighborhoods, and ecosystems with a focus on climate change adaptation. He is associate professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Florida, director of the Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER), and director of the Florida Resilient Cities program (FRC). Jeff’s work in Florida is focused on the resilience of communities achieved through transdisciplinary and community engaged design processes. His current projects include a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development funded effort to design post-disaster modular housing, and an FRC project to assist the panhandle City of Port St. Joe to recover from Hurricane Michael that is supported by the Jessie Ball Dupont fund. Previously, Jeff was the director of the LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio (CSS) where he led the development of the Louisiana Resiliency Assistance Program (LRAP) that continues to assist communities throughout Louisiana; additionally, he led the design and fabrication of the 10,000sf permanent exhibition for the LSU Center for River Studies called “shifting Foundations” which told the story of coastal Louisiana’s changing landscape and the new paradigms in protection and restoration needed to create a more sustainable coast. He co-directed his team’s award-winning submission for the Changing Course competition entitled “The Giving Delta,” that reimagined Louisiana’s ecological systems and coastal communities in the context of climate change. Shortly before moving to UF Jeff initiated and led the project “Inland from the Coast,” a three-year grant supported by the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Jeff’s work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale and his projects and scholarship have been published widely. His projects have been recognized through awards including the 2018 AIABR Rose Award winner for the Shifting Foundations exhibit; the 2016 New York Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects Merit Award, for “The Giving Delta”; the 2014 APA Planning Excellence Award for Education, for the Louisiana Resilience Assistance Program; the 2012 ACSA Collaborative Practice Award, for the Coastal Sustainability Studio; and the 2011 EDRA Great Places Awards in Design Research for “Measured Change: Tracking Transformations on Bayou Lafourche.” Jeff teaches undergraduate and graduate level architecture studios and multi-disciplinary seminars on resilience design and planning at the building, neighborhood, and regional scale. Jeff received his bachelor’s degree in architecture from Washington University in St. Louis and master’s degrees in both architecture and city and regional planning from the University of California, Berkeley. While at Berkeley, Jeff was awarded the Branner Fellowship to conduct a year-long research project to study the evolution of modernist neighborhood-scale urbanism in Europe, South America, and Asia, an experience which continues to shape his work today.
Amy Knowles, Chief Resilience Officer
City of Miami Beach
As the Chief Resilience Officer, Amy Knowles leads strategic and resilience planning and special projects and works across city departments and stakeholders. Resilience planning includes Resilient305, a unique resilience strategy for Greater Miami and the Beaches, and the Miami Beach Strategic Plan through the Lens of Resilience, both unanimously adopted by the City of Miami Beach in 2019. Innovative projects include the Urban Land Institute Panel on Stormwater Management and Climate Adaptation, the Business Case Analysis of the Stormwater Program, and working with the City’s Floodplain Manager on the National Flood Insurance Program Community Rating System.
Ms. Knowles was recently selected to be on the North American Steering Committee for the Global Resilient Cities Network. She participates in in the work of Southeast Florida Climate Compact, Resiliency Florida, and countywide planning
Ms. Knowles holds a Master of Business Administration from the University of Miami and a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies from Binghamton University in New York. Ms. Knowles is a graduate of Leadership ICMA, the University of Virginia Senior Executive Institute, and the Harvard Kennedy School’s executive program