Debra Laefer – PI
Debra Laefer is Full Professor of Civil and Urban Engineering at New York University’s Center for Urban Science + Progress. She has a wide-ranging background spanning from geotechnical and structural engineering to art history and historic preservation. In her decade and a half as a faculty member in both the US and Europe, Prof. Laefer has served as the principal investigator for grants from a wide range of sponsors. Prof. Laefer has authored over 160 peer-reviewed publications, been awarded 4 patents, and has supervised 15 doctoral and 20 Masters theses. Among many honors from IEEE, ISPRS, and other professional societies, the most notable is perhaps the 2016 commissioning and hanging of her portrait by the Royal Irish Academy as one of eight researchers selected for the Women on Walls project to celebrate Irish women in science and engineering.
Rae Zimmerman – Co-PI
Rae Zimmerman is Research Professor and Professor Emerita of Planning and Public Administration at New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, following a full-time tenured professorship, and she currently directs NYU-Wagner’s Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems. She is a AAAS Fellow, past president and Fellow of the international Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) and recipient of SRA’s 2019 Distinguished Achievement Award and 2015 Outstanding Service Award. She authored or co-edited a half dozen books, including Transport, the Environment and Security and 200 other publications encompassing social and economic dimensions of infrastructure systems and their vulnerability to natural hazards, climate change, and accidents. She has had over four dozen research grants currently focusing on infrastructure interdependencies and sustainability, COVID-19 related food consumption patterns, risk communication, and behaviors that shape and are shaped by infrastructure services. URL:http://wagner.nyu.edu/zimmerman
Education: B.A. Chemistry (U. of California, Berkeley), Master of City Planning U. of Pennsylvania and Ph.D in Planning Columbia University.
Alan Leidner – Senior Personnel
Alan Leidner has a MS in Urban Planning and had a thirty-five year
career in City government working for City Planning, the Mayor’s Office, DEP and DOITT. He then worked for ten years at Booz Allen & Hamilton as a consultant to the Department of Homeland Security and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. He was the City’s first and only Chief Geospatial Information Officer and Directed the Emergency Mapping and Data Center Following the 9/11 attack. He currently serves as President of the NYC Geospatial Information Systems and Mapping Organization (GISMO: www.gismonyc.org)
Wendy Dorf – Senior Personnel
Wendy Dorf was employed in New York City Government for over 35 years, including 20 years in New York City DEP where she managed the development and implementation of the citywide digital watermain map, participated in development of the citywide digital sewer map and co-managed the development and implementation of the New York City digital basemap. In the response to the 9/11 attack on the WTC, Ms. Dorf was responsible to collect underground infrastructure data and managed a team of engineers and GIS Specialists tasked with integrating and mapping the data for first responders at the site. Since retiring from NYC government, she has consulted and advocated for infrastructure data digital integration.
Star Childs – Senior Personnel
Star Childs is an urban designer, planner and technologist with a strong entrepreneurial work ethic. I have a passion for understanding the many complex systems inherent in civic society and developing scalable place-based solutions to challenges that cities face. I’m an experienced team leader with a Masters of Environmental Management and a focus on Land Use Planning and Neighborhood Development from Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
Josh Lieberman – Senior Personnel
Josh Lieberman develops, leads, and manages OGC Innovation Program initiatives. Originally trained as a geologist and environmental scientist, Josh has been involved in OGC both as a member and as an initiative architect for almost two decades while serving as principal at Tumbling Walls, senior geospatial analysis manager at Deloitte, and lead architect at Traverse Technologies and Syncline. He is also a part-time senior researcher at the Harvard Center for Geographic Analysis and teaches graduate classes at Harvard and UMBC. Josh currently leads the IP initiative Disaster Pilot 2021 and ITA track of Testbed 17, as well as working to develop future IP initiatives and supporting OGC standards activities such as MUDDI, GeoPose, and Routing API.
Sean Ahearn – Senior Personnel
Prof. Ahearn is a Professor of Geography and Director of the Center for Advanced Research of Spatial Information (CARSI) at Hunter College – CUNY. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Environmental Remote Sensing in 1986 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Sean played a major role in managing the design, development, and implementation of NYCMap. Additionally, he managed a series of GIS and remote sensing applications in response and mitigation to the events of September 11th.
Peter Gmelch – Project Manager
Peter Gmelch is part of the research staff at NYU’s Center for Urban Science + Progress. He has a BS in environmental science and sustainability and recently completed his master’s in environmental conservation education at NYU Steinhardt. Much of his research has involved using GIS to empower and educate communities about the risks of climate change and sea level rise in coastal cities.
Carlos Restrepo – Associate Research Scientist
Carlos E. Restrepo is Associate Research Scientist at NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. He is currently working on stakeholder engagement and infrastructure interdependencies as part of the Unification of Underground Resilience Measures (UNUM) project. He has over 15 years of research and teaching experience in sustainable urban development, infrastructure resilience, environmental quality and public health, environmental justice, and environmental policy. Carlos has a PhD in Public Administration from NYU Wagner.
Emilie Clark – Project Artist
Emilie Clark is a New York artist who works in drawing, painting, installation and writing. Emilie’s work has been featured in many publications, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Bomb, Printed Project, Cabinet Magazine, Art in America, Art Week, and Hyperallergic. Emilie will be creating a series of interactive and community facing art projects including an outdoor research station inside of a repurposed catch basin, and a community scavenger hunt in Sunset Park.
Kim Hertz – PhD Candidate
Kim Hertz is a PhD Candidate in the Urban Systems Program at NYU, focusing on exploring the integration and implementation of technology within communities through human centered design. Kim is leading the project’s community based “Digital Twin” in Sunset Park.
Karnik Panchal – Masters Student
Karnik Panchal is pursuing his Master’s in Computer Engineering with a concentration in Machine Learning at New York University and a Graduate Research Assistant on UNUM. He will be contributing to UNUM by assisting with the development of a multi-level of detail representation of subsurface utilities.
Kshitij Chandna – Masters Student
Kshitij Chandna, is a MS student at NYU CUSP with a background in computer science. Kshitij is currently working on a data visualization problem to shows the dangers of flooding in urban areas. He serves as a junior team leader and assists students in problem solving and research for various projects.
Kewal Jani – Masters Student
Kewal is currently pursuing his master’s in computer engineering with a specialization in machine learning at NYU Tandon school of engineering. He is interested in data science and machine learning and will be working on analyzing the data and 3D visualization part of the muddi model. He is very interested in this part as as he likes to work on digital art in his free time.
Saumya Pandey – Masters Student
As a student in her third semester of MS (Computer Engineering) at NYU, Saumya’s area of interest is Data Science and Machine Learning. She is excited and feels proud to be a part of the UNUM project, which is going to provide an immense opportunity to contribute for a better cause. Saumya’s contribution in this important project will be predominantly data formatting and data visualization.
Charan Kukunoor – Masters Student
Charan is an urban development practitioner with experience in integration of urban systems, infrastructure planning, strategic landuse and spatial planning . He is a strong advocate for the need of digital twins to build resilience in the urban systems. He will be working on building the logic model for MUDDI and use it to integrate open source data to the base model.