Ali Nejat is the director of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Developmen Center of Research Excellence in Climate Resilience and Equitable Housing (CECREH) at Texas Tech University. CECREH, a consortium of multiple universities, is dedicated to developing equitable housing solutions in the face of disasters. Nejat, an associate professor of construction engineering at Texas Tech University, focuses his research on modeling the dynamics of post-disaster housing and household recovery. Additionally, he studies equitable community resilience in the face of extreme natural hazards, such as flooding, and winter storms, exploring resilience from the perspective of communities and their inherent vulnerabilities. Nejat's research has received funding from various federal and state agencies, including the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Texas Department of Transportation. His work in developing an agent-based model of collective housing recovery earned him an NSF Faculty Early Career Development award in 2015. His research has been published in various reputable disaster-related social science and engineering journals.