FIU experts are available to discuss the 2024 hurricane season

Hugh E. Willoughby

Distinguished Research Professor
Department of Earth and Environment
Institute of Environment
College of Arts, Sciences & Education

Willoughby studies tropical cyclone structure, intensity, and impacts. He has flown more than 400 missions into the eyes of hurricanes and typhoons as a meteorologist for the federal government. Willoughby was a Research Meteorologist at the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, where he worked since 1975 and served as director from 1995 until 2002. Willoughby also serves on the Florida Commission on Hurricane Loss Projection Methodology and has extensive knowledge of hurricane impacts and insurance.

Office: 305-348-0243
Email:  hugh.willoughby@fiu.edu

Haiyan Jiang

Professor
Department of Earth and Environment
College of Arts, Sciences & Education

Jiang is a meteorologist with research interests in hurricane intensity, intensity change and structures of inner-core convection and precipitation. Jiang’s expertise is in satellite remote sensing techniques that can detect various characteristics of weather systems. She successfully applied these technologies to study hurricane rainfall, convection, winds, and warm-core structures. A coherent theme of her research is to advance our understanding of hurricane intensity and intensity change. She developed long-term satellite-based tropical cyclone databases and used these tools to study the climatology of hurricanes and to develop algorithms for estimating current intensity and predicting rapid intensification of tropical cyclones. Her research on hurricane intensity estimation, rapid intensification prediction, and climatology of hurricane inner-core structures has been funded by federal agencies including NSF, NOAA and NASA.

View more information on Dr. Jiang's research

Office: 305-348-2984
Email:  haiyan.jiang@fiu.edu

Ping Zhu

Professor
Department of Earth and Environment
College of Arts, Sciences & Education

Zhu is a meteorologist whose research interests are in hurricanes, atmospheric convection, boundary layer, and numerical modeling. Using innovative numerical and observational methods, he characterizes the turbulence structure and quantifies turbulent transport in the hurricane boundary layer critical to the storm evolution. His research funded by NSF and NOAA addresses key issues on the representation of sub-grid-scale physical processes in numerical models and the improvement of forecasting skill by NOAA's operational models used for predicting hurricanes.

Office: 305-348-7096
Email:zhup@fiu.edu

Erik Salna

Associate Director for Education and Outreach
Extreme Events Institute (EEI) & International Hurricane Research Center (IHRC)

Salna works with the Wall of Wind research team and coordinates education and outreach activities. He has experience as a broadcast meteorologist and within both non-profit and for-profit environments in meteorology, mitigation, preparedness, education, media and EOC activations. Before EEI & IHRC, he worked at America’s Emergency Network, which focused on live video streaming technology. He also served as project coordinator for the non-profit Hurricane Warning at the Disaster Survival House, located in Deerfield Beach. He also served as hazard mitigation manager for the City of Deerfield Beach, was on the city’s crisis activation team and participated in all activations of the emergency operations center.
Salna testified before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology on the importance of storm preparedness, the forecasting workforce and fostering a Weather-Ready Nation (WRN).

Office: 305-348-1146
Email:  Erik.Salna@fiu.edu 

Kevin Grove

Associate Professor of Geography
Department Global and Sociocultural Studies
Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs

Grove, a political geographer studies resilience, vulnerability, adaptation, environmental security, development, and how human-environment relations are governed in the context of contemporary crises. By examining everyday practices of governance shapes how we create truths about the world and act in the world, and the techniques deployed to create and contest those truth claims. This came about through his work in disaster resilience and emergency management in Jamaica.

Office: 305-348-3343
Email: kgrove@fiu.edu

Maria Ilcheva

Associate Director
Jorge M. Perez Metropolitan Center
Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs

Ilcheva is investigating how prepared Floridians are to face hurricanes and how they use information toward their preparations. Ilcheva is examining the measures residents, businesses and public officials are taking to mitigate the effect of hurricanes and what barriers exist to implement optimal preparedness. Ilcheva’s hurricane research focuses on the real and perceptual changes in homeowners insurance. Ilcheva specializes in the administration of surveys, polls and interviews, data analysis and reporting.
Cell: 954-438-8652
Email: milcheva@fiu.edu

N. Emel Ganapati

Director, Laboratory for Social Science Research, International Hurricane Research Center, Extreme Events Institute
Department of Public Policy and Administration
Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs

Ganapati studies disaster management, citizen participation/community empowerment, and international development administration. Her principal focus is on post-disaster recovery, a topic that has received very little attention in the public administration discipline.  Currently, Ganapati leads an interdisciplinary social science team, including two alumni, searching for answers to the 2021 Surfside condo collapse. Their effort will collect oral histories of survivors, eyewitnesses and first responders to gain a deeper understanding of issues associated with the disaster. 

Office: 305-348-0436
Email: ganapat@fiu.edu

Pallab Mozumder

Professor
Department of Earth and Environment & Department of Economics
Institute of Environment
College of Arts, Sciences & Education

Mozumder is an environmental economist with expertise in socio-economic aspects of natural hazards. His research on hurricane risk mitigation and evacuation behavior has been funded by federal and state agencies such as the National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Florida Department of Community Affairs and Florida Sea Grant.
Office: 305-348-7146
Email:mozumder@fiu.edu

Robert M. Jorge

Senior Director
Division of Operations and Safety
Academy for International Disaster Preparedness

Jorge has had over three decades of leadership experience at the City of Miami Fire Rescue Department and Miami Dade College. He has served as an Assistant Fire Chief and brings expertise that spans through Emergency Incident Management, Emergency Medical Services (EMS), and academic program development. He has been involved with local, state and federal agencies during most local major disasters that have occurred in the last 30 years.
Cell: (305) 348-5153
Email: rjorge@fiu.edu

Mark J. Macgowan

Associate Dean of Academic Affairs
Professor of Social Work
Robert Stempel College of Public Health & Social Work

As a licensed therapist, Macgowan has served as a disaster mental health worker with the American Red Cross and currently serves as a behavioral health specialist with a federal Disaster Medical Assistance Team. Recent Florida deployments include Hurricane Michael in the Panhandle and Hurricane Ian on the Southwest Coast. Macgowan teaches FIU’s only graduate course on disaster mental health and trains health professionals internationally on best practices related to psychosocial response to mass casualty events. His research advances effective practices related to well-being and disasters, which include systematic reviews of therapies for people affected by mass casualty events. His recent federally funded projects include establishing a hurricane response technical assistance center serving Miami‐Dade and Escambia Counties, Florida, and social science data collection related to the Champlain Towers South building collapse in Surfside, Florida.
Cell: (305) 348-0427
Email:  macgowan@fiu.edu

Amal Elawady

Assistant Professor
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
College of Engineering and Computing

Elawady is a Fellow of FIU’s Extreme Event Institute and a co-PI of the NHERI Wall of Wind Experimental Facility (WOW) at FIU. Elawady’s expertise is in the area of wind effects on built environment. Her studies involve large-scale wind tunnel testing, wind effects analysis to examine structural response, and design of structures against extreme wind events including hurricanes and non-synoptic downburst winds. Elawady is the recipient of the Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation. She also received FIU College of Engineering Research award for excellence in research and creative activities.
Office: 305-348-0256
Email:aelawady@fiu.edu

Eli Beracha

Director
Tibor and Sheila Hollo School of Real Estate Faculty
College of Business

An investment consultant with over 20 years of practical real-world experience, Beracha has worked with real estate development projects, acquisition and disposition decisions, and real estate funds. Over the years, he has published dozens of academic papers in leading real estate and finance journals, including the Journal of Real Estate Literature. He’s also managing editor of the Journal of Real Estate Practice and Education and is an elected member of the board of directors of the American Real Estate Society.
Cell: 785-841-4470
Email: eberacha@fiu.edu

William Hardin

Dean, College of Business
Knight Ridder Eminent Scholar, Tibor and Sheila Hollo Fellow
Eminent Scholar, Tibor and Sheila Hollo School of Real Estate

Hardin is a recognized expert on commercial real estate markets, financial markets and securitized real estate. A member of the board of directors of the American Real Estate Society, he has authored or co-authored some 70 papers on varied topics in commercial real estate investment, including REIT governance and financial structure. Hardin is co-editor of the Journal of Real Estate Practice and Education and of the Journal of Real Estate Research. He is an elected member of the board of directors of the American Real Estate Society.
Cell: 954-298-8675 
Email: hardinw@fiu.edu

Dr. Aileen M. Marty

Distinguished University Professor
School of Integrated Science and Humanities, College of Arts, Sciences & Education
Department of Translational Medicine, Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine

Dr. Marty is a Miami-Dade County Medical Reserve Corps member and works with the county government on hurricane strategy and outbreak response. Marty has extensive experience in infectious disease, public health, outbreak response, & mass gatherings. She also works with the World Health Organization at the Health-Security Interphase and has responded to disease outbreaks worldwide. Marty is co-editor-in-chief of One Health, the official journal of the International Federation for Tropical Medicine.
Marty is available for interviews in English and Spanish.
Office: 305-348-0377
Email: amarty@fiu.edu

Dr. Eneida O. Roldan

Professor
Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine
Chief Executive Officer, FIU HealthCare Network

Dr. Roldan is a member of the FIU Emergency Operations Committee. She has played a key role in the local COVID-19 response serving as clinical director for the FIU vaccination site and chair of the University Health Care Task Force. She also helped launch and served as clinical director and operations chief of the Miami-Dade County COVID-19 testing site adjacent to FIU. In addition, her vast experience in health care management can help address issues involving hurricane response in facilities including hospitals, nursing homes, and community shelters.
Roldan is available for interviews in English and Spanish.

Deanne Butchey

Teaching Professor
Department of Finance

Before joining FIU, Butchey worked as an Investment Banker and Financial Services Stock Research Analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston in their Toronto offices. Prior to this, she was a stockbroker at Scotia McLeod and Merrill Lynch in Toronto. Butchey performs research in Environmental, Social, and Governance Investing and Analysis including CEO compensation and Sustainability issues.

Office: (305) 348-7238
Email:  butcheyd@fiu.edu

Mark Del Pezzo

Associate Teaching Professor
Department of Finance
College of Business

Del Pezzo is a CFA and former investment banker and portfolio manager for numerous depository institutions and trust departments. The courses he teaches include advanced investments and financial management. He has worked as a portfolio manager at both Raymond James and Deutsch Bank.
Office: 305-348-8459
Email: mdelpezz@fiu.edu

Aileen Izquierdo

Associate Teaching Professor
Director, School of Communication
Program Director, Global Strategic Communications master’s degree program
College of Communication, Architecture & the Arts

Izquierdo is a communications professional with more than 25 years of strategic communications, branding and crisis communications experience in private and public sector organizations. She has held several executive and management positions throughout her career, including serving as vice president for communications and marketing at multiple institutions. Izquierdo is the Director of the School of Communication at Florida International University and is part of the faculty. She also oversees the Global Strategic Communications master’s degree program at FIU. Izquierdo is available for interviews in English and Spanish.

Email:aiizquie@fiu.edu