NSF awards $1M to the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences for climate change education and research

The faculty members from the Department of Civil Engineering and the Department of Computer Science and Information Technology (CSIT) at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) were awarded a $1,000,000 NSF grant in August 2022 to establish the Center of Climate Change Analytics (C3A). The mission of the center is to establish an educational and research platform at UDC that will help train undergraduate and graduate students to become transformative leaders in the workforce, government and beyond to address emerging contemporary issues of climate change.

Dr. Bryan Higgs, assistant professor of civil engineering is the principal investigator for this grant. Co-principal investigators are Dr. Thabet Kacem, associate professor of CSIT, Dr. Hossain Azam, assistant professor of civil engineering, and Dr. Pradeep Behera, professor of civil engineering.

Higgs stated that climate change is the major challenge facing the world today.

“Charting the path forward to understanding the impacts and risks presented by a changing climate is a top priority that needs leaders that are educated on this specific issue,” he said. “The Center of Climate Change Analytics will fulfill this need by not only advancing knowledge of the impacts of climate change but by educating undergraduate and graduate students with the specific knowledge to answer the call of what the future needs.”

Behera added that “understanding the impacts of climate change, specifically arising from sea level rise and extreme weather events, on the urban infrastructure, coastal communities at a local scale is very important for creating efficient solution approaches.”

“The NSF-funded UDC Center of Climate Change Analytics will provide an opportunity to establish a research and academic platform, which would not only support interdisciplinary research activities for the faculty members but also support our undergraduate and graduate students in understanding the climate change-related problems and their engineering solution approaches,” said Behera.

The platform will advance our basic understanding and develop solutions to address the impacts of climate change on coastal communities, ecosystems, and urban infrastructure through the application of game theory.

The key goals of the center include:

· Integrating climate change and related issues into the curriculum and delivering quality education to diverse undergraduate and graduate students to build the needed technical skill sets in the future workforce to address emerging problems;

· Creating UDC Faculty research capabilities to advance science and engineering concerning the nexus of data, uncertainty, and modeling in their application to climate

change problems;

· Developing unique cross-industry connections with stakeholders, including officials from coastal towns and cities for developing practical, data-driven analytical solutions and providing access to undergraduate and graduate (MS and Ph.D.) university students as well as high school students for

future workforce development. This center will ensure the expansion of the recently launched Ph.D. degree in Computer Science and Engineering at UDC by offering financial support to graduate students from underrepresented groups who are interested in multidisciplinary research.

Devdas Shetty, dean of SEAS, said that he is equally excited about the Center of Climate Change Analytics at UDC.

“As engineers and scientists, our job is not only to innovate and advance the knowledge on climatic changes but think inclusively about the impact of our research work for the needs of the society,” he said. “This grant is a great example of advancing the basic understanding and developing solutions to attack global challenges.” To learn more about SEAS, please click here.