Maria Dillard is a research social scientist focused on community response to hazards and chronic stressors and the development of methods for measurement and modeling community resilience, well-being, and vulnerability. Her work includes the development and application of a measurement model for community well-being following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, integrated assessments of community vulnerability to climate change for climate adaptation planning, and quantification of human use and dependence on natural resources. At the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Dillard is working to expand research on community resilience with a particular emphasis on the social dimensions of disasters and recovery.
Dillard is the associate team lead for the NIST Hurricane Maria Program and associate lead technical investigator of the National Construction Safety Team (NCST) investigating the impacts of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rico. Previously, she served as the acting director of the Disaster and Failure Studies Program at NIST.
Dillard holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Pittsburgh with a focus on the measurement of social-ecological resilience for coastal and island communities and a master's in sociology from East Carolina University. Before joining NIST, she was a social scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Coastal and Ocean Science and a Veterans Affairs Healthcare Administration researcher.