Guirong (Grace) Yan

Grace Yan is an associate professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. She is the director of the Center for Hazard Mitigation and Community Resilience, in which 35 faculty members from 12 departments are affiliated. She is also the director of Wind Hazard Mitigation (WHAM) Laboratory, home to a large-scale tornado simulator. She serves the North American Alliance of Hazards and Disaster Research Institutes (NAAHDRI) Board of Directors as the chair. She has led interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research teams in addressing community resilience under a changing climate from different perspectives. Thus far, she has published more than 120 refereed journal and conference papers; She has secured 29 research grants, with a total amount of more than $10M, from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), the Department of Transportation (DOT), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and other agencies. From the engineering perspective, she simulates different natural hazards (e.g., tornadoes, hurricanes, storm surge, floods, etc.) numerically and experimentally and investigates their actions on built environment, and studies the vulnerability of communities to natural hazards as well as develop innovative approaches mitigate and adapt to climate change impacts. She promotes convergence scientific/engineering research and community encouragement to enhance national community resilience through collaboration among wind engineering, climatology, geoscience, urban planning, social science, psychology, economics, and finance; She also promotes international collaboration to address global warming and climate change faced by the entire earth.