DesignSafe Radio

On today's episode of DesignSafe Radio, we speak with meteorologist Erik Salna, the associate director for the Florida International University Extreme Events Institute and the International Hurricane Research Center. Salna chats with us about the 2020 hurricane season, how researchers can continue to learn from this hurricane season,and the importance of evacuation orders.  The NHERI Wall of Wind...

On today's episode of DesignSafe Radio, we speak with Erik Salna, associate director of the International Hurricane Research Center at the Florida International University. Salna explains tips on how to mitigate your home from future hurricane damage. A link on this topic has been provided below. Salna also announces exciting news for the NHERI Wall of Wind at FIU and how it will be utilized in fu...

On today's episode of DesignSafe Radio, we speak with Erik Salna, associate director of the International Hurricane Research Center at the Florida International University. Salna explains the FIU Extreme Events Institute and the International Hurricane Research Center, and how they are utilized in research with the NHERI Wall of Wind.  The Wall of Wind can replicate hurricane winds as high as 157...

On today's episode of DesignSafe Radio, we speak with meteorologist Erik Salna, the associate director of education and outreach for the Florida International University Extreme Events Institute and the International Hurricane Research Center. Salna explains how the NHERI Wall of Wind at Florida International University has been utilized by researchers to enhance building structures and design hur...

On this episode of Designsafe Radio, we speak with Arash Khosravifar, an assistant professor in the civil and environmental engineering department at Portland State University. Khosravifar explains his research on soil liquefaction, his experience researching with the NHERI mobile shaker trucks and the team from the University of Texas, Austin, and the new research he has been participating in cal...

On this episode of Designsafe Radio, we speak with Arash Khosravifar, an assistant professor in the civil and environmental engineering department at Portland State University. Khosravifar explains his research on soil liquefaction, his experience researching with the NHERI mobile shaker trucks and the team from the University of Texas, Austin, and the new research he has been participating in cal...

On this episode of Designsafe Radio, we speak with Arash Khosravifar, an assistant professor in the civil and environmental engineering department at Portland State University. Khosravifar explains his research on soil liquefaction, his experience researching with the NHERI mobile shaker trucks and the team from the University of Texas, Austin, and the new research he has been participating in cal...

Today, Tracy Kijewski-Correa from the University of Notre Dame talks to us about her work in the Structural Extreme Events Reconnaissance (STEER) Network and the response to Hurricane Dorian! You can find all the published data reports from the teams here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16dXnDoQXTMllv0ospJFqTD-Rr4gzDzWgqUjUvNIO8fQ/edit

Peek was born and raised in Kansas, where she completed her undergraduate work in sociology at Ottawa University. She earned her master’s in education at Colorado State University then her PhD in sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder.   Peek discusses growing up in a tornado-prone state. She has vivid memories of the storm cellar during tornado watches, and her grandparents’ barn and hom...

Frank Lombardo Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering Wind Engineering Research Laboratory University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign   On the cusp of Hurricane Florence, host Dan Zehner was lucky enough to meet up with wind engineer Frank Lombardo. Based at the University of Illinois, Lombardo studies extreme wind events and and their effects on structures.   Lombardo says he has...

As this storm approaches, we talk with Laura Block from Team Rubicon about how the organization is mobilizing and planning for a Harvey storm level response if it is needed.   Support Team Rubicon as the storm approaches! teamrubiconusa.org/give

On today’s episode, host Dan Zehner visits Steve Schein, chief instrumentation engineer at the University of Florida’s Powell Family Structures and Material Laboratory.   From an early age, Steve Schein has been involved in science, coming from a family of engineers and scientists. He earned his degree in electrical and electronic engineering at UF and now enjoys building wind-generating machines...

In this week’s show, DesignSafe Radio host Dan Zehner talks with newly minted PhD, Barbara Simpson. Simpson discusses her academic path in engineering and what it’s like entering the workplace as a faculty member.   She says building things out of household articles as a kid naturally led to her career choice. She started in architecture, then switched to civil engineering. A pivotal experience fo...

On this week’s episode, host Dan Zehner meets up with political economist and writer Morten Wendelbo. As early as high school, the Denmark native was exposed to international viewpoints that shaped his understanding of the world. Today, he focuses on demographic research in an effort to improve the lives of as many people as possible.   He earned his bachelor’s degree in global politics and enviro...

Hermann Fritz School of Civil and Environmental Engineering Georgia Tech   In this episode, host Dan Zehner interviews Georgia Tech tsunami researcher Hermann Fritz. Professor Fritz discusses his unusual academic focus and his current project creating a tsunami generating machine at the University of Oregon.   As a civil engineering graduate student at ETH Zurich, he was interested in studying flo...

This week Dan meets storm chaser Warren Causey, founder of The Sirens Project. Causey, an engineer with a lifelong passion for weather, studies tornadoes from a safe distance, using unmanned aerial vehicles, drones. In the interview, Causey describes growing up in Georgia and chasing storms in the mountainous Southeast, in Dixie Alley. Hoping to design weather research systems, he studied mechanic...

Legendary hurricane hunter Frank Marks Today’s guest is Frank Marks, legendary NOAA meteorologist and tropical cyclone expert. Since the 1980s, he’s flown 10,000 hours on NOAA’s P3 Orion aircraft, including through many, many hurricanes. Marks, who now leads NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division, clearly enjoys learning. He shares some of his favorite experiences with us. Curiosity and a career path....

Raised and schooled in the Caribbean island of Trinidad, from an early age David Prevatt was interested in science and structures. As an islander, he also grew up sailing and windsurfing. He recollects the exhilarating feeling of using wind power to skim the waves. He earned his bachelor’s in civil engineering from the University of the West Indies. After a stint as a civil engineer in Trinidad an...

Today DesignSafe Radio host Dan Zehner meets up with Jennifer Bridge , a research engineer from the University of Florida – and deputy director of UF’s NHERI facility.   When recalling her initial interest in engineering, she says she enjoyed math and physics in high school, making engineering a natural career path. In college, she majored in civil engineering. A turning point, she says, was when...

For earthquake engineer Kara Peterman, joining the high school robotics team was a defining experience. She discovered she loved the applied sciences. So, when she entered Swarthmore College, she majored in engineering. Because she loved buildings and architecture, and she liked the idea of designing resilient structures, she decided to a focus in structural engineering.   She wanted to be a profe...

Dan Lander and Dan Moore are wind engineers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute doing research using NHERI’s Wall of Wind facility at Florida International University. On this week’s show, they talk about their project and offer advice to prospective wind engineers.   Australian-born Dan Lander originally wanted to build things. When he discovered construction engineering held no joy for him, he...

Hurricane season 2018: Let’s get prepped   This week, we get prepped for the 2018 hurricane season with emergency management specialist Tom Iovino from the Florida Department of Health in Manatee County. Host Dan Zehner talks with Iovino about some less than obvious dangers related to hurricanes, and Iovino proffers excellent great advice for anyone near hurricane-prone areas, from Texas to Maine....

On this week’s episode host Dan Zehner talks with Maggie Exton, a PhD candidate at Oregon State University focusing on tsunami inundation. She talks about her interest in engineering and her current research project: creating tsunamis on a centrifuge.   She says her father, a sculptor, helped interest her in building things as a kid. As an undergraduate at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute she stud...

This week on the show, we talk about a fascinating subject area: using drones to quickly assess a hazard area after an event and create an extremely detailed and accurate 3D model for researchers to study the effects of earthquakes, hurricanes, or other hazards on a community while the data is still fresh and the site is relatively undisturbed. This work is extremely important because getting scie...