Each year, the Mary Fran Myers Scholarship— named in honor of the late Natural Hazards Center co-director—recognizes outstanding individuals who share Myers passion for disaster loss reduction nationally and internationally.
The scholarship provides financial support to recipients who otherwise would be unable to attend and participate in the Annual Hazards Research and Applications Workshop to further their research or community work and careers.
The Mary Fran Myers Scholarship selection committee chose three recipients to receive the 2018 Scholarship:
Lily Bui
Lily Bui: Bui is a PhD student in MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Her work focuses on disaster risk reduction planning on urbanized islands. Bui is also a researcher for the Civic Data Design Lab and Urban Risk Lab, where she works on projects at the intersection of information systems and disaster risk reduction.
Bui has served as a research fellow at the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center in Honolulu, Hawaii; the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources in San Juan, Puerto Rico; SensingCity, a smart city initiative in Christchurch, New Zealand; and Making Sense EU and SmartCitizen at Fab Lab Barcelona in Spain. She is as an affiliated expert on urbanization for the U.S. Naval War College Humanitarian Response Program and is a staff officer in the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary.
Bui received her master’s from MIT's Comparative Media Studies and a dual B.A. in Spanish and international studies from the University of California Irvine.
Hannah Eboh
Hannah Eboh: Hannah Eboh is a masters student at Northern Illinois University where she studies risk perception in small island developing states and geographic information science. In 2017, she received a Fulbright grant to the Commonwealth of Dominica in the Caribbean where she conducted a case study looking at the population's perception of the island's notable volcanic risk.
While conducting research in Dominica, Eboh experienced the eye of Hurricane Maria, a Category 5 event that devastated the island. This experience further increased her interest in risk perception as she observed differing reactions during the preparation, landfall, and the immediate response to the hurricane.
Eboh was contracted to co-develop a geographic information systems course by the Barbados Red Cross Caribbean Disaster Risk Management Reference Center. She has also served as a national preparedness intern with the Federal Emergency Management Agency where she worked on the 2015 Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment.
Chongming Wang
Chongming Wang: Wang is an assistant emergency management professor at Jacksonville State University. Wang’s research revolves around the themes of vulnerability and resilience to natural hazards—particularly elder vulnerability to coastal hazards. As a broadly-trained human-environment geographer, she draws on research from various disciplines to understand what makes people vulnerable and how vulnerability can be reduced.
Wang’s master's thesis was a fine-grained quantitative vulnerability analysis of older adults to hurricane hazards, which earned the Gilbert F. White Thesis Award given by Association of American Geographers. Her doctoral dissertation used a qualitative inquiry to answer questions surrounding hurricane risk perception and preparedness, as well as evacuation attitudes and decision-making among older adults.
She received doctorate and master’s in geography from Pennsylvania State University. She also holds a bachelor’s in GIS from East China Normal University in Shanghai, China.