Tanya Brown-Giammanco

Tanya Brown-Giammanco serves as Disaster and Failure Studies director, leading a multidisciplinary staff responsible for conducting fact-finding field investigations and studies focused on: building and infrastructure failures and successes; evacuation and emergency response systems; and disaster recovery and community resilience. The results of these field investigations are intended to inform recommendations to improve codes, standards, and practice. Brown-Giammanco currently oversees National Construction Safety Team investigations on the effects of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, and the partial collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside, Florida.

Prior to joining National Institute of Standards and Technology, Brown-Giammanco served as Managing Director of Research at the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety, where she led teams conducting full-scale laboratory and field studies on hail, wind, rain, wildfire, and roofing related projects. She has also held a Faculty Associate appointment at Texas Tech University since 2010. Brown-Giammanco earned a PhD in Wind Science and Engineering from Texas Tech University, and a master's degree in water resources science and a bachelor's degree in atmospheric science, both from the University of Kansas.

Brown-Giammanco is a Federal Emergency Management Agency Vanguard Executive Crisis Leadership fellow. She serves as a steering committee member in the development of a new American Society of Civil Engineers standard on the estimation of wind speeds in tornadoes and chairs the Enhanced Fujita-Scale subcommittee. Brown-Giammanco is also a member of the Standards Technical Panel for the Impact Resistance of Prepared Roof Covering Materials (UL 2218) standard and the American Society for Testing and Materials D08 Roofing Committee.