The Center for Disaster Resilient Communities has selected its inaugural cohort of applied learning fellows for its program, Increasing Diversity in and Equitable Access to Applied Learning in Disaster Research Response: IDEAAL DR2.
IDEAAL DR2, which is funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, offers training in environmental and public health disaster research methods and skills for up to 25 advanced graduate students and early career hazards and disaster researchers a year from across the United States. This year’s fellows, and their respective institutions of employment, are:
| Name | Institution |
| Sarah LaPointe | Emory University |
| Sarah Scales | University of Nebraska Medical Center |
| Shriya Thakkar | Louisiana State University |
| Shenghua Wu | University of South Alabama |
| Mia Leigh Renna | University of Maryland, College Park |
| Judanne Lennox-Morrison | Texas A&M University |
| Eun Kyung Lee | State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry |
| Joseph Karanja | Arizona State University |
| Aikaterini (Katerina) P. Kyprioti | University of Oklahoma |
| Tihara Richardson Sommers | Tulane University |
| Yun Hang | University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston |
| Vivian Do | Columbia University |
| Maggie Leon-Corwin | University of Oklahoma |
| Christopher Ihinegbu | University of California, Irvine |
| Natasha Malmin | Georgia State University |
| Melissa Villarreal | University of Colorado Boulder |
| Anthony J. Orsino | Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine |
| Ashley Reed | The George Washington University |
| Hemali Oza | Emory University |
| Brenda María Trejo Rosas | The George Washington University |
| Shelley McMullen | University of California, Berkeley |
| Helena Archer | University of Colorado Denver |
| Paula Belmont Coelho | Purdue University |
| Matthew Van | University of Delaware |
| Maja Jeranko | University of Washington |
The program’s short course consists of online training, a weeklong in-person component held at the University of Washington campus and individual work at their home institutions to complete yearlong research projects. Examples of research projects or focus areas of these cohort of scholars include:
- The relationship between infrastructure and human behavior during disasters
- Examining the health impacts of disasters and hazards such as train derailments, wildfire smoke, and extreme heat and the distribution of these impacts
- Investigating decision making and risk perception/risk communication during disasters
- Exploring impacts of multiple occurring disasters/impacts
- Evaluating emergency and disaster preparedness and response efforts
- Exploring and integrating community priorities into hazard adaptation
The application period for the next cohort of fellows will open in approximately March 2025. Please visit the program web page to learn more.