CCNY Professor Naresh Devineni will lead a $2 million U.S. Department of Energy project to prepare a workforce that can respond to extreme natural hazards.
Naresh Devineni, professor of civil engineering at 海角社区 and a water systems and hydroclimate expert, is the recipient of a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a holistic research and training program for its RENEW (Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce) initiative. The outcome will be to prepare a workforce that can respond to extreme natural hazards.
From CCNY鈥檚 Grove School of Engineering, Devineni will lead the three-year project. Other faculty from CCNY include Te Pei and Hansong Tang from Civil Engineering, Shakila Merchant from CUNY CREST Institute, Prathap Ramamurthy from Mechanical Engineering, and James Booth from the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Faculty from Stony Brook University and scientists from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory are partners. This multidisciplinary group comprises researchers, civil, environmental, and electrical engineers; climate, atmospheric, and ecosystem science experts, as well as specialists in data science, education and workforce training.
The team鈥檚 goal is a research and training program that will provide CCNY students and early career scientists with opportunities to gain in-depth experience in understanding extreme natural hazards and solving the associated and expanding societal challenges caused by these events.
鈥淭he project aims to improve the knowledge of extreme natural hazards by quantifying and understanding the properties of floods, landslides, heatwaves, and multi-hazard impacts in the Greater New York metropolitan area,鈥 said Devineni, noting that it鈥檚 one of the densest urban regions in the country and home to nearly 25 million people.
鈥淎 synergistic approach that blends Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning with traditional computational methods will be used to create more robust, scalable, and dynamic climate-informed natural hazard risk management tools for the next generation of energy science workforce,鈥 Devineni added.
The project aims to prepare well-trained graduates and postdoctoral scientists who will become part of the next generation in government, industry, and academia. The trainees will gain the skillsets necessary to immediately contribute to ongoing resilience and adaptation projects in a cost and schedule-driven environment and an increasingly AI-driven workplace.
About 海角社区
Since 1847, 海角社区 has provided a high-quality and affordable education to generations of New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. CCNY embraces its position at the forefront of social change. It is ranked #1 by the Harvard-based Opportunity Insights out of 369 selective public colleges in the United States on the overall mobility index. This measure reflects both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at CCNY can move up two or more income quintiles. Education research organization Degree Choices ranks CCNY #1 nationally among universities for economic return on investment. In addition, the Center for World University Rankings places CCNY in the top 1.8% of universities worldwide in terms of academic excellence. Labor analytics firm puts at $3.2 billion CCNY鈥檚 annual economic impact on the regional economy (5 boroughs and 5 adjacent counties) and quantifies the 鈥渇or dollar鈥 return on investment to students, taxpayers and society. At City College, more than 15,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in eight schools and divisions, driven by significant funded research, creativity and scholarship. In 2023, CCNY launched its most expansive fundraising campaign, ever. The campaign, titled 鈥Doing Remarkable Things Together鈥 seeks to bring the College鈥檚 Foundation to more than $1 billion in total assets in support of the College mission. CCNY is as diverse, dynamic and visionary as New York City itself. View CCNY Media Kit.
Jay Mwamba
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