Team
Our team brings together researchers working on infrastructure resilience, probabilistic modeling, scientific AI, disaster recovery, and decision-making under uncertainty.
Principal Investigator
Luis Ceferino (see contact info)
Assistant Professor
Luis Ceferino is an Assistant Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. Before joining Berkeley in 2024, he was an Assistant Professor at NYU and a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Structural Engineering from Stanford University and his B.S. in Civil Engineering from Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería in Peru. His research focuses on disaster risk analysis, infrastructure resilience, uncertainty quantification, scientific AI, and computational methods for decision-making under extreme events.
Postdoctoral Scholars
Prateek Arora (co-advised with Prof. Ziqi Wang and Michael Lindsey)
Postdoctoral Scholar
Prateek Arora is a postdoctoral scholar in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in Civil and Urban Engineering from NYU, his M.S. in Structural Engineering from Stanford University, and his B.S. in Civil Engineering from BITS Pilani. Before graduate school, he also worked in structural engineering in San Francisco. His research focuses on digital twins, hazard and risk analysis, remote sensing, and power-system resilience under earthquakes and hurricanes.
Yvonne Merino
Postdoctoral Scholar
Yvonne Merino is a postdoctoral scholar in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. in Engineering Sciences from the Structural and Geotechnical Engineering Department at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She previously studied Civil Engineering in Colombia and also holds a Master’s degree in Earthquake Engineering. Her research focuses on seismic risk in emergency healthcare networks, human casualties after earthquakes, and the interaction between structural damage and life-safety outcomes.
Ph.D. Scholars
Riccardo Negri
Ph.D. Candidate
Riccardo Negri is a Ph.D. candidate in Civil and Urban Engineering at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering. He received his M.S. in Applied Urban Science and Informatics from NYU and previously earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Civil Engineering from Politecnico di Milano, where he specialized in structural engineering. He also has professional experience in structural design and facility management in Italy and the United States. His research focuses on the socio-economic impacts of natural hazards, flood risk, housing adaptation, recovery, and long-term community resilience.
SoungEil Houng
Ph.D. Candidate
SoungEil Houng is a Ph.D. student in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Earth System Sciences from Yonsei University in South Korea, specializing in seismology and geophysics. Before starting his Ph.D., he worked on seismic hazard analysis for nuclear power plant sites in South Korea. His research focuses on probabilistic seismic hazard and risk analysis, rare-event simulation, uncertainty quantification, and hazard- and risk-consistent ground-motion modeling.
Kexun Li
Ph.D. Student
Kexun Li is a Ph.D. student in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. He received his M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from UC Berkeley in 2024 and his B.S. in Civil Engineering from Zhejiang University in 2023, with a focus on structural engineering. His research focuses on seismic hazard analysis, structural dynamics, physics-informed neural networks, and performance-based engineering. He is particularly interested in using advanced computational methods to improve the resilience and safety of civil infrastructure under extreme events.
Luis Cossio
Ph.D. Student
Luis Cossio is a Ph.D. student in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. He received his B.S. in Civil Engineering from the Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería in Peru and has professional experience in the structural analysis and design of steel buildings. His research focuses on resilience-based design of healthcare buildings, post-disaster recovery and risk modeling, and artificial intelligence for structural engineering. His work aims to connect structural performance with functionality, life safety, and recovery after extreme events.
Weiqi Chu (co-advised with Prof. Ziqi Wang)
Ph.D. Student
Weiqi Chu is a Ph.D. student in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley, specializing in Systems Engineering. She earned her Master’s degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from UC Berkeley in 2026 and her Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering, with a minor in Data Science, from City University of Hong Kong in 2025. Her research focuses on seismic risk and resilience of infrastructure systems, with interests in physics-informed modeling, digital twins, and data-driven methods for electric utility systems. She integrates structural dynamics, probabilistic modeling, machine learning, and computer vision to improve the assessment and resilience of critical infrastructure under earthquakes.
Carlos Dávila
Ph.D. Student
Carlos Davila is a Ph.D. student in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley, specializing in Systems Engineering. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in 2024 in Civil Engineering from the National University of Engineering, Peru, with a focus on geospatial analysis and numerical modeling for tsunami hazard studies. His research interests lie in developing new computational methods for multiple hazard analysis to support urban and infrastructure resilience.
Visiting Scholars
Yan Liu
Visiting Ph.D. Student
Yan Liu is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Economics and Management at Tongji University and a visiting researcher in the Disaster Risk Analysis Lab. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Engineering Management from Tongji University in 2021. Her research focuses on disaster resilience and operational efficiency in hospital systems. In particular, she studies how hospitals can improve resilience during extreme events while maintaining efficient performance under routine operating conditions.
Alumni & Former Researchers
Sen Yang
Visiting Ph.D. Student, 2024–2025
Currently: Ph.D. candidate at Tsinghua University, China.
Research: AI-enhanced agent-based modeling for tsunami evacuation.
Azin Ghaffary
Urban Science Faculty Fellow, 2024–2025
Currently: Project engineer at Thornton Tomasetti
Research: Wind-induced interference effects in high-rise buildings.
Charalampos Avraam
Postdoctoral Associate, 2021–2023
Currently: Senior researcher at the U.S. National Laboratory of the Rockies
Research: Compound natural hazards and cyberattacks affecting urban infrastructure systems.
Carlos Mesta
Visiting Scholar, 2021–2022
Currently: Ph.D. candidate at IUSS Pavia, Italy
Research: Modeling patient arrivals to healthcare facilities after earthquakes.
Lab Life
Group outings, conferences, fieldwork, and activities from the Disaster Risk Analysis Lab.
