LSU Hurricane & Extreme Weather Experts

LSU has a number of experts available to discuss topics related to storm preparedness, climate, economic impacts, recovery efforts and more during the 2021 hurricane season. Please check here as this list will be updated.To schedule interviews, contact 225-578-5685/eballa1@lsu.edu  or 510-816-8161/asatake@lsu.edu.

 

Climatology and Meteorology

Alaric Haag, LSU Earth Scan Laboratory operational manager and LSU Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences and Coastal Studies Institute information technology staff
Areas of Expertise: Satellite image processing of atmospheric and oceanic phenomenon; data analysis and visualization in support of emergency response, faculty research and graduate education. 
haag@lsu.edu
Visit www.esl.lsu.edu for satellite imagery and animations.

Barry Keim, LSU Department of Geography & Anthropology Richard J. Russell Professor and Louisiana State Climatologist
Areas of Expertise: Climate extremes including heavy rainfall and hurricanes; detection of climate change and its impacts; statistical analysis of extremes and Probable Maximum Precipitation.
225-578-6170
keim@lsu.edu

Kam-biu Liu, LSU Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences, professor and chair, George W. Barineau III Professor
Areas of Expertise: Hurricanes and typhoons, paleotempestology, coastal paleoecology, global environmental change, palynology and lake-sediments in the U.S. Gulf coast and Atlantic coast, Caribbean region and Central America, South America (Andes and Amazon Basin), Tibetan Plateau, China
225-578-8203
kliu1@lsu.edu 

Paul Miller, LSU Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences assistant professor
Areas of Expertise: Hazardous weather impacts; coastal meteorology; thunderstorms and land-atmosphere interactions. Conducted new research on how hurricanes can affect weather after landfall. 
225-578-6458
pmiller1@lsu.edu

Robert Rohli, LSU Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences professor
Areas of Expertise: Coastal weather and climate, atmospheric circulation variability, atmospheric hazards, tropical cyclone dynamics, surface-atmosphere interactions, synoptic meteorology and climatology.
225-578-6346
rohli@lsu.edu

Jill Trepanier, LSU Department of Geography & Anthropology associate professor
Areas of Expertise: extreme climatic and weather phenomena including tropical cyclones; applies statistics to analyze these events.
225-578-6192
jtrepa3@lsu.edu

Nan Walker, LSU Earth Scan Laboratory director and the LSU Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences J. P. Morgan Distinguished Professor in Coastal Studies
Areas of Expertise: Satellite remote sensing and real-time surveillance of hurricanes, tropical storms and the Gulf of Mexico Loop Current and associated ocean eddies to predict and understand hurricane intensity changes, generation of strong currents and upwelling of cool waters; impacts of storms on coastal circulation and coastal erosion.
nwalker@lsu.edu
Visit www.esl.lsu.edu for satellite imagery and animations.

Human Impacts

Katie E. Cherry, LSU Department of Psychology, professor
Areas of expertise: Disaster stress; current research projects focus on disaster stress related to the historic flooding of 2016 and prior hurricane experience.
225-578-4099
pskatie@lsu.edu 

Craig Colten, LSU Department of Geography & Anthropology emeritus professor
Areas of Expertise: Historical and social geography of hazards. Wrote The Conversation article, "Hurricanes can cause enormous damage inland, but emergency plans focus on coasts" and the 2009 book "Perilous Place, Powerful Storms: Hurricane Protection in Coastal Louisiana."
225-578-6180
ccolten@lsu.edu

Michael Pasquier, Jaak Seynaeve Professor of Christian Studies and associate professor in religious studies and history
Areas of Expertise: history and culture of a fishing community outside the levee-protected system of coastal Louisiana; coastal Louisiana oral histories; and the history of religion in the Mississippi River Delta from the colonial period to the present.
225-578-2271
mpasquier@lsu.edu

Tim Slack, LSU Department of Sociology professor
Areas of Expertise: Community vulnerability and resiliency; disparities in impacts across social groups; social stratification and social demography.
225-578-1116
slack@lsu.edu

Kevin T. Smiley, LSU Department of Sociology, assistant professor
Areas of Expertise: Environmental sociology; community and urban sociology; disasters; health; race; immigration; social capital.
ksmiley@lsu.edu 

Disaster Recovery and Resilience

Aly-Mousaad Aly, LSU Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering assistant professor
Areas of Expertise: Wind impact on the build environment; innovative mitigation strategies to build more resilient communities; large-scale wind testing at high Reynolds number under realistic turbulence.
225-578-6654
aly@lsu.edu

Traci Birch, LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio interim managing director and School of Architecture assistant professor
Areas of Expertise: Resiliency in community design and planning and coastal community development.
225-578-4990
tbirch@lsu.edu

Carol Friedland, LSU Bert S. Turner Department of Construction Management Cajun Constructors and Performance Contractors Associate Professor
Areas of Expertise: Hazard-resistant construction and mitigation; performance of housing and other built infrastructure subjected to natural hazards; combined wind and flood interactions on structures; post-event data acquisition; remote sensing of building damage; hazard-resistant and sustainable construction; integration of Geographic Information Systems, or GIS, in hazards research; hazard mitigation planning and mitigation decision-making; and loss estimation.
225-578-1155
friedland@lsu.edu

Navid Jafari, assistant professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Areas of Expertise: Part of Hurricane Resilience Research Institute; Exploring new ways to get real-time data during severe weather events by deploying sensors using unmanned aerial vehicles in hard-to-reach areas; Investigates the performance of flood protection infrastructure and natural and nature based features.
225-578-8475 
njafari@lsu.edu 

Heather Kirk-Ballard, assistant professor, School of Plant, Environmental and Soil Sciences
Areas of Expertise: Landscape preparation and storm damage recovery
225-578-2110
hkirkballard@agcenter.lsu.edu 

Nina Lam, LSU Department of Environmental Sciences professor
Areas of Expertise: Flooding in inland communities across the U.S. and resilience to natural disasters. Wrote The Conversation article: "Americans who live far from coasts should also be worried about flooding."
225-578-6197
nlam@lsu.edu

Brant Mitchell, LSU Stephenson Disaster Management Institute director
Areas of Expertise: Disaster response and evacuations.
225-578-5939
bmitch9@lsu.edu

Claudette Hanks Reichel, LSU AgCenter LaHouse Resource Center director, professor and extension housing specialist 
Areas of Expertise: Sustainable, resilient housing; residential building science; energy management; indoor air quality; disaster mitigation and restoration; universal design. LaHouse Resource Center is an educational sustainable housing demonstration facility: http://www.lsuagcenter.com/lahouse
225-202-6593 (cell)
225-578-4440
creichel@agcenter.lsu.edu

Edward Richards, LSU Law Center Climate Change Law and Policy Project director and professor 
Areas of Expertise: Flood insurance plans; flood maps; land use issues, extreme weather, coastal restoration, and climate change. His publications include: Applying Life Insurance Principles to Coastal Property Insurance to Incentivize Adaptation to Climate Change, 43 B.C. Envtl. Aff. L. Rev. 427 (2016); The Hurricane Katrina Litigation Against the Corps of Engineers: Is Denial of Geology and Climate Change the Way to Save New Orleans? (2018); and The Societal Impacts of Climate Anomalies during the Past 50,000 Years and Their Implications for Solastalgia and Adaptation to Future Climate Change, 18 Hous. J. Health L. & Pol'y 131 (2018). He maintains the Climate Change Law and Policy Project Blog.
richards@lsu.edu

Chao Sun, LSU Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering assistant professor 
Areas of Expertise: Coastal hazards characterization and mitigation with a focus on power transmission and distribution systems during severe storms.
225-578-8511
csun@lsu.edu

Children & Family

Anna Long, LSU Department of Psychology associate professor
Areas of Expertise: Child and school psychology. She wrote the tip sheet: Helping Kids Cope with Traumatic Events and is a licensed psychologist in the state of Louisiana.
225-578-7605
along@lsu.edu

Economic Impact

David E. Dismukes, LSU Center for Energy Studies director and College of the Coast & Environment professor
Areas of Expertise: economic impacts of tropical storms and hurricanes on Gulf of Mexico oil and gas infrastructure, production and transport; power and utilities infrastructure.
dismukes@lsu.edu

Dek Terrell, LSU E. J. Ourso College of Business Freeport-McMoRan Endowed Chair of Economics 
Areas of Expertise: Regional and statewide economics; applied econometric and environmental-related studies.
225-578-3785
mdterre@lsu.edu

Evacuations

Brant Mitchell, LSU Stephenson Disaster Management Institute director
Areas of Expertise: Disaster response and evacuations.
225-578-5939
bmitch9@lsu.edu 

Brian Wolshon, Edward A. and Karen Wax Schmitt Distinguished Professor of Engineering in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering and director of the Gulf Coast Research Center for Evacuation and Transportation Resiliency
Areas of Expertise: Hurricane evacuations and major event traffic scenarios. His recent projects have included the testing and evaluation of intelligent transportation systems and traffic-flow analysis, with particular emphasis in application for hurricane evacuation. For more on the Gulf Coast Research Center for Evacuation and Transportation Resiliency, visit http://www.evaccenter.lsu.edu/. 
225-578-5247
brian@rsip.lsu.edu    

Food Safety

Wennie Xu, LSU AgCenter associate professor
Area of Expertise: Natural disaster food safety 
302-229-8499 (cell) 
225-578-3997
wenqing.xu@agcenter.lsu.edu

 

Floods, Rivers and Storm Surge

Matthew Hiatt, LSU Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences assistant professor
Areas of Expertise: How the movement of water, sediment and nutrients in river deltas, estuaries and wetlands affects the environment; deltas and wetlands; environmental fluid dynamics; flooding and water level fluctuations.
225-578-6092
mhiatt1@lsu.edu

Richard Keim, LSU School of Renewable Natural Resources professor
Areas of Expertise: Hydrology of forested wetlands and watersheds; management of bottomland and coastal forests; hydrological interactions between forests, soils and the atmosphere; scaling of hydrological processes; dendrochronology.
225 578-4169
rkeim@lsu.edu  

John Pardue, LSU Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering Elizabeth Howell Stewart Professor and Hazardous Substance Research Center director
Areas of Expertise: Fate and transport of chemical contaminants during hurricanes and floods, handling debris after disasters and impacts of storm surge on industrial facilities; Part of Hurricane Resilience Research Institute.
225-578-8661
jpardue@lsu.edu

Frank Tsai, LSU Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering professor
Areas of Expertise: Watershed and groundwater flow, fate and transport modeling in aquifer systems and surface water.
225-578-4246
ftsai@lsu.edu

Clint Willson, LSU Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering Mike N. Dooley P.E. Professor and LSU Center for River Studies director
Areas of Expertise: Watershed hydrology; physical and numerical modeling of rivers 
225-578-8672
cwillson@lsu.edu

Photo, Documents and Book Restoration

Ed Benoit, LSU School of Library & Information Science associate professor
Areas of Expertise: Recovering damaged photos and other items; documenting natural disasters, cultural heritage, archival process and audiovisual preservation; climate change impacts on cultural heritage institutions such as libraries, archives, museums, etc.
225-578-1469 
414-336-4966 (cell) 
ebenoit@lsu.edu

Anne Edwards, LSU Libraries Special Collections, facilities manager
Areas of Expertise: Disaster planning and management for cultural heritage materials and facilities. 
225-578-6548
alsmith@lsu.edu 

Caroline Ziegler, LSU Libraries Special Collections, conservation coordinator
Areas of Expertise: Conservation of paper-based materials; Cultural heritage preservation best practices.   
225-578-6280
cziegler@lsu.edu 

 

Communication and Social Media

Renee Edwards, LSU Department of Communication Studies, professor
Areas of expertise: Risk communication, risk and decision-making concerning extreme weather and climate events
225-578-6821
edwards@lsu.edu 

Lance Porter, LSU Manship School of Mass Communication Class of 1941 Alumni Professor and Social Media Analysis and Creation Lab director
Areas of Expertise: Social media effects and sharing in times of disaster and emergency. 
225-573-7485 
lporter@lsu.edu

Seungwon Yang, LSU School of Library & Information Science and the Center for Computation & Technology assistant professor
Areas of Expertise: Crisis informatics, social media and machine or deep learning.
225-578-7411
seungwonyang@lsu.edu

 

Animal Welfare, Pets and Wildlife

Prosanta Chakrabarty, LSU Museum of Natural Sciences curator of fishes and Department of Biological Sciences professor
Areas of Expertise: Deep sea fish in Gulf of Mexico and systematics of marine and freshwater fishes.
225-578-3079
prosanta@lsu.edu

Mustajab Mirza, LSU School of Veterinary Medicine Equine Surgery associate professor
Areas of Expertise: Horses; equine surgery.
225-578-9575
kabooter@lsu.edu

Brandy Duhon, LSU School of Veterinary Medicine Clinical Instructor of Clinical Skills and Junior Surgery
Areas of Expertise: Animal disaster response
225-578-9922
bduhon7@lsu.edu

Laura Riggs, LSU School of Veterinary Medicine associate professor of equine surgery
Areas of Expertise: Large animal disaster response
225-578-9922
lriggs@lsu.edu 

Chance Armstrong, LSU School of Veterinary Medicine associate professor of food animal medicine
Areas of Expertise: Large animal disaster response
225-578-9500
carmstrong@lsu.edu

Mark Mitchell, LSU School of Veterinary Medicine Zoological Medicine professor
Areas of Expertise: Reptiles; Gulf Coast wildlife.
225-578-9738
mmitchell@lsu.edu 

 

Additional Links:

How Hurricanes Can Affect Weather after Landfall
LSU AgCenter’s information on how to best prepare your home, family, pets and property
Make your home more resilient for hurricane season
LSU AgCenter’s Disaster Information Resources
Tips for Pet Owners
Tips for Horse Owners
What to Do if You Encounter Wildlife
Disaster Preparedness
 

In the News:

June 14, 2021
Tropics and air temperature heating up
Louisiana Radio Network

June 1, 2021
Add ‘Climate Hazards’ to Your Home-Buyer’s Checklist
The New York Times

May 30, 2021:
Experts warn US needs to better prepare for hurricane season
The Hill