2015 Hurricane Season: College of Engineering Experts Available

Today marks the start of the 2015 Hurricane Season, and the LSU College of Engineering is home to experts on topics ranging from evacuations and coastal modeling to disaster response and structural engineering.

2015 Hurricane Season

Disaster Preparation/Management

Carol Friedland
Assistant Professor, Department of Construction Management
Areas of Expertise: Hurricane wind and storm surge damage assessment, vulnerability assessments, damage modeling, applications of remote sensing for hurricane damage detection, structural engineering.
Contact: 225-578-1155, friedland@lsu.edu

Evacuations

Brian Wolshon
Director, LSU Transportation Lab, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering
Areas of Expertise: Hurricane evacuations and major-event traffic scenarios, intelligent transportation systems and traffic-flow analysis.
Contact: 225-578-5247, brian@rsip.lsu.edu

Storms/Climatology/Coastal Modeling

Q. Jim Chen
Professor, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering 
Areas of Expertise: Coastal engineering, prediction of storm surge and ocean waves, numerical modeling of costal processes, design of coastal structures.
Contact: 225-578-4911, qchen@lsu.edu

Environmental Impact of Disasters

John Pardue
Civil and Environmental Engineering, Elizabeth Howell Stewart Endowed Professor 
Areas of Expertise: Fate and transport of chemical contaminants during hurricanes; passively treating groundwater contaminated with chlorinated solvents in treatment wetlands; environmental impacts; and investigating the uptake of desorption-resistant organic contaminants by wetland plants.
Contact: (225) 578-8661 jpardue@lsu.edu

Scott C. Hagen
Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Areas of Expertise: massively parallel, high performance computational modeling of ocean, coastal and inland shallow water flows. His recent efforts expand into transport and ecological modeling, particularly with respect to the coastal dynamics of sea level rise.

Structural Engineering

Aly-Mousaad Aly
Assistant Professor, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering 
Area of expertise: Wind storm loads induced on the built environment
Contact: 225-578-6654, aly@lsu.edu

Michele Barbato
Assistant professor, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering
Area of Expertise: Structural engineering and dynamics
Contact: 225-578-8719, mbarbato@lsu.edu

Steve Cai
Edwin B. and Norma S. McNeil Distinguished Professor, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering
Areas of Expertise: Bridge engineering, wind engineering, structural dynamics, structural performance evaluation and rehabilitation.
Contact: 225-578-8898, cscai@lsu.edu

Dimitris Nikitopoulos
Alexis & Marguerite Voorhies Endowed Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Area of Expertise: Fluid-structure interaction and wind-tunnel measurement and testing techniques
Contact: 225-578-5903, meniki@me.lsu.edu

Ayman Okeil
Associate Professor, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering
Areas of Expertise: Bridge engineering, structural reliability, nondestructive testing and evaluation of structures, structural rehabilitation and strengthening, nonlinear behavior of concrete structures.
Contact: 225-578-7048, aokeil@lsu.edu

Disaster Response and Clean-Up

Marcio de Querioz
Professor, Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering 
Areas of Expertise: Nonlinear control theory and application, Multi-agent systems, Robotics, Active magnetic and mechanical bearings, Biological and biomedical system modeling and control
Contact: 225-578-8770, dequeiroz@me.lsu.edu

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For more information, contact communications manager Sydni Dunn at 225-578-5706, or at sydnid@lsu.edu. For a list of all LSU faculty experts, across departments and colleges, visit the LSU Media Center.