Ali Nejat, Ph.D., P.E., has been elected a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).
Nejat serves as associate academic dean for undergraduate studies in the Edward E. Whitacre Jr. College of Engineering (WCOE) at Texas Tech University and is a professor in the WCOE Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering (CECE).
Election as an ASCE Fellow is a prestigious professional honor, held by about 3% of members, recognizing those who have made celebrated contributions to the civil engineering profession and developed innovative solutions that have improved lives worldwide.
"This is a well-deserved honor acknowledging Ali's important work," said Roland Faller, dean of the WCOE.
Andrew Jackson, chair of the CECE department added, “Dr. Nejat’s research is groundbreaking in the field of disaster resilience and community recovery. What I am most impressed with is his use of multiple fields to address the problem in a holistic manner. His research will have a real impact on response to future disasters.”
Nejat also serves as founding director of the Center of Excellence in Capacity-building for REsilient Housing (CECREH), a research center funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Nejat has spent the past 15 years contributing to a new scientific foundation for understanding how communities recover after disasters. In 2015, he led the development of RecovUS with his team, one of the first agent-based models to simulate how households, agencies and community members interact and make decisions during post-disaster housing recovery. This work was supported by a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, one of only 11 such awards given nationally that year within the Engineering Directorate's infrastructure portfolio. He is also among the pioneers in applying statistical and machine learning methods, including LASSO regression and spatial models, along with early use of nighttime satellite imagery, to study recovery after disasters such as Hurricane Sandy and Winter Storm Uri.
Once a disaster has occurred, the simulation model helps identify the areas of unmet need so efforts by appropriate stakeholders can be more effectively targeted to those needs.
“My work in the field following Hurricane Sandy in 2012 was really an eye-opening experience that revealed how many different factors come into play in a community after a disaster and how significant the gaps can be for unmet needs,” Nejat said. “Recovery is not an automatic or even a straightforward process. For a community to recover effectively, not only does the community have to consider structural and safety concerns, but the stakeholders responsible for financial resources, social services, contractors and workforce availability all must work together to meet needs.
“What I saw was this: You can’t optimize recovery efforts without a coordinated interdisciplinary approach.”
His research has contributed to national guidelines through collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Applied Technology Council on functional recovery for buildings. He was also invited as a co-author for the Third Assessment of Natural Hazards led by the Natural Hazards Center, the first major update to the field's knowledge base since Disasters by Design.
“What most excites me about the work that we’ve done is the contributions we have been able to make to disaster housing recovery in a way that incorporates a wide scope of disciplines to enhance recovery,” Nejat said. “The ultimate goal for this kind of research is to shorten the duration of the recovery by effectively addressing the community needs.”
Nejat continues to extend the impact of his foundational research through CECREH, which is a multi-institutional consortium advancing climate-resilient and affordable housing research, connecting universities, federal partners and housing advocacy organizations including Texas Housers, Texas Appleseed, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Shimberg Center for Housing Studies, RAND Corporation, the National Low Income Housing Coalition, and the Urban Institute. CECREH’s work is to develop tools and decision-making platforms to help with recovery efforts.
Nejat expects that advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models will create opportunities to more effectively integrate data from multiple sources, validate models and present the research results in formats tailored to the specific information needs of stakeholder and their respective areas of responsibility.
Beyond his numerous peer-reviewed publications, Nejat served as associate editor of the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, the top-ranked journal in emergency management, and has secured more than $3 million in external prorated funding as principal or co-principal investigator. He has been recognized as a Fulbright Scholar, a Texas Academic Leadership Academy Fellow, an NSF Game Changer Academies Fellow, and named by students as one of Texas Tech University's Most Influential Faculty Members in 2023.
Nejat has mentored more than 20 doctoral students to completion and has served for more than a decade as Faculty Advisor to the Associated General Contractors Student Chapter, coaching student teams to first place regional rankings for four consecutive years in national design-build competitions.