Award Winners

Disability and Disasters Award

The Disability and Disasters Award supports people with disabilities working in disasters, as well as those who care for, study, or advocate on behalf of those with disabilities. Award funds will allow the recipient to attend the annual Natural Hazards Workshop and the Researchers or Practitioners Meetings that follow. The 2026 winners are:

Erin Taylor (she/her) is a passionate advocate for equity and accessibility, dedicated to dismantling ableism and fostering belonging. Her work centers disabled people’s voices, honors intersectionality, and ensures access needs are recognized and met. With deep expertise in creating accessible, inclusive training materials, Taylor has presented throughout Oregon and nationally on disability justice, anti-ableism, health promotion, and disaster preparedness. She co-founded AIM-4-Access with her partner in 2022, and in 2023 helped launch the nonprofit Upstream Access, which creates spaces for social connection while advancing inclusive disaster preparedness and cross-disability collaboration throughout the state of Oregon. Through this work, Taylor has helped position Upstream Access as the first organization in the United States to pilot Person-Centered Emergency Preparedness (P-CEP), a strengths-based curriculum developed in Australia.

A core focus of Taylor's disaster preparedness work is power resilience. Through community listening and direct engagement, she has highlighted a critical and often overlooked gap: many disabled people lack access to backup power or solar-powered devices during extreme weather events and power outages. Her work addresses this inequity by integrating disability justice, climate resilience, and practical solutions that support autonomy, safety, and interdependence. A proud member of the disability and LGBTQIA+ communities, with non-apparent disabilities, Taylor holds an master's in disability studies from the City University of New York and a bacherlor's in communication studies from Western Oregon University. Beyond advocacy, she is a lifelong musician and enjoys hiking, kayaking, and capturing the beauty of the Pacific Northwest through photography.

Elan Tulberg is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research explores the intersection of disability, race, and gender within the context of crisis and community. Her current project focuses on the survival of disabled Angelenos during the Los Angeles wildfires in January 2025. This work inquires into the different modes of survival implemented by disabled survivors of natural disasters and seeks to innovate sociological understanding of climate crises and survivorship through the application of disability theory.

Her Master’s thesis "Are We Still Friends?: Understanding Disabled Women of Color’s Experiences with Friendship & Isolation During Covid" draws on interviews with 24 disabled and/or immnocompromised women of color about their experiences with their friends across the COVID-19 pandemic. This work is featured in an in-depth interview for SAGE Video’s Disability Collection, available here. Tulberg's advocacy for accessible scholarship is showcased through her past media projects, such as her documentary The Skirted White Man: Black Queer Culture’s Erasure in Fashion, featured for the University of California, Los Angeles' Gender Neutrality Project.

Tulberg's interest in intersectionally exploring how disabled people build or sustain community in times of crisis is rooted in her personal experience as a disabled queer researcher of color. With a devotion to care, her work speaks to communities with heightened vulnerability during times of crisis that have historically been overlooked and untended.

To see a list of all previous winners, please click here: Disability and Disasters Award Winners

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Mary Fran Myers Scholarship

The Mary Fran Myers Scholarship recognizes outstanding individuals who share Myers' commitment to disaster research and practice and have the potential to make a lasting contribution to reducing disaster vulnerability. The 2025 winners are:

Taiwo Ogunwumi is an internationally recognized flood risk and disaster management specialist with expertise in geospatial science, climate resilience, and community-centered hazard mitigation. He currently works as a Flood Risk & Disaster Management Specialist at Deltares, a leading independent institute for applied research in water and subsurface systems. In this role, he supports governments, humanitarian agencies, and international partners with data-driven solutions that reduce vulnerability and strengthen resilience to water-related hazards across Africa, Asia, and Europe.

Ogunwumi’s work bridges cutting-edge science and practical implementation. He leverages satellite data, advanced flood modelling, Geographic Information Systems-based hazard mapping, and Earth observation technologies to generate actionable insights for disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. His portfolio includes flood risk assessments and resilience planning initiatives in Nigeria, Ghana, South Sudan, São Tomé & Príncipe, Madagascar, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Ethiopia, and Germany.

As the founder and senior project lead of the Geohazards Risk Mapping Initiative (GRMI), a youth-led nonprofit focused on flood risk reduction in Nigeria, Ogunwumi led the development of real-time flood reporting platforms and interactive flood susceptibility maps. These innovations strengthened early warning systems, enhanced disaster preparedness, and informed emergency response strategies across multiple states. He also led and mentored multidisciplinary teams of geospatial volunteers, fostering local capacity in disaster risk reduction.

Beyond technical implementation, Ogunwumi contributes to international policy and capacity-building efforts. He has engaged in global disaster risk reduction dialogues, promoted youth participation under frameworks such as the Sendai Framework, and supported training programs for professionals and students in flood risk analysis and geospatial modeling. Through research, innovation, and inclusive engagement, Ogunwumi remains committed to advancing resilient communities and evidence-based solutions in the face of escalating climate-related risks.

Read more about the 2026 winner as well as past scholarship recipients on the Mary Fran Myers Scholarship Winners page.

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Student Paper Competition

The Natural Hazards Center created the Annual Hazards and Disasters Student Paper Competition for undergraduate and graduate students in 2004 as a way to recognize and promote the next generation of hazards and disaster researchers. The 2026 winners are:

Undergraduate Winner

Kylie-Anne MacLeod is a recent graduate from Mount Royal University, where she earned her undergraduate degree in sociology. Her academic work focuses on the sociology of disaster, with particular attention to rural marginalization and its impact on vulnerability, response, and recovery. Her research examines the 2022 Appalachian floods, analyzing how structural inequalities in rural communities exacerbated the disaster and limited access to mitigation resources and support after the disaster struck. MacLeod is interested in exploring how social systems shape disaster outcomes and is passionate about contributing to more equitable approaches to emergency management and recovery.

Marginality Underwater: Rural Marginalization and Vulnerability in the 2022 Appalachian Floods

Graduate Winner

Mayesha Shams is a PhD student in the Fire and Emergency Management Administration program at Oklahoma State University. Shams received both her bachelor and master’s degrees in disaster management from the Institute of Disaster Management and Vulnerability Studies at the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh. O During her time at Oklahoma State, she has worked as a research assistant under the supervision of Dale Li in a National Science Foundation-funded project titled ‘Coping with Stressors: Understanding Negative Emotions, Harmful Strategies, and the Role of Fire Service Culture’ where she assisted with GIS mapping and spatial analysis. In addition, Shams serves as a teaching assistant for the Introduction to Emergency Management course. Shams' research interests focus on disaster governance, the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and emergency management, and disaster politics. Her master’s thesis analyzed the socio-economic impacts of Covid-19 through gender lens in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Outside of her studies, Shams is also engaged as a volunteer of American Red Cross (Kansas-Oklahoma Region) on the Disaster Action Team, where she supports local disaster response efforts, serves in shelter centers, and conducts community-level training on CPR and disaster preparedness. This service deepens her knowledge by bridging the gap between theory and real-world practice in emergency management field.

Can AI Replace Human Stakeholders in Emergency Management? Exploring the Promise and Pitfall of Automation on Authority, Trust, and Outcome Through a Narrative Literature Review

Learn more about the competition and view previous winning papers on the Student Paper Competition page.