We are so pleased to announce that Haorui Wu has been named as the Canada Research Chair in Resilience. Wu, a former Natural Hazards Center postdoctoral research associate and current research affiliate, is currently an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at Dalhousie University.
In 2000, the Government of Canada established the Canada Research Chairs (CRCs) Program, which "stands at the centre of a national strategy to make Canada one of the world's top countries in research and development." According to the CRCs website, “Chairholders aim to achieve research excellence in engineering and the natural sciences, health sciences, humanities, and social sciences. They improve our depth of knowledge and quality of life, strengthen Canada's international competitiveness, and help train the next generation of highly skilled people through student supervision, teaching, and the coordination of other researchers' work."
Wu said that he plans to leverage his chair term to help establish a much-needed culture of resilience that will confront workforce challenges, a lack of curriculum for hazards and disaster education, and inadequate community-driven research frameworks at the national level.
"Canada has entered an era of frequently-occurring billion-dollar disasters; however, most Canadian communities have not yet sufficiently developed resilience capacity," Wu said.
Wu hopes to convert these crucial challenges into unique opportunities and take fundamental steps toward establishing a nationally focused, social research infrastructure for hazards and disaster research.
"My engagement in the NSF-funded CONVERGE initiative, including the Social Science Extreme Events Research (SSEER) network and the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Extreme Events Research (ISEEER) network, while at the Natural Hazards Center established a solid theoretical foundation and a comprehensive research network,” Wu said. “What I learned at the Center now supports my CRC agenda.”
Natural Hazards Center director and CONVERGE leader, Lori Peek, said she was ecstatic when she learned that Wu had been named the Canada Research Chair in Resilience.
“We were so fortunate to have Haorui here at the Natural Hazards Center for two years,” she said. “Now to see him making such a difference in the Canadian context makes the entire team so proud, hopeful, and inspired.”
You can learn more about the Canada Research Chairs Program here and Wu's work on his website here.