Dr. Shangjia Dong is an Assistant Professor, also the named Bentley Systems Early Career Professor, in the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, a core faculty member in the Disaster Research Center (DRC), a faculty member in the Sociotechnical System Center (SSC) at the University of Delaware, and an Early Career Research Fellow at National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Gulf Research Program (GRP). He is also an active member of the NSF Coastal Hazards, Equity, Economic prosperity & Resilience (CHEER) Hub. He obtained his dual B.S. in Information and Computational Science and Finance from the University of Electronic Sciences and Technology of China. After he received his M.S. and Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering and minor in Computer Sciences from Oregon State University, following which he completed post-doctoral research training at Texas A&M University.

Utkarsh joined the lab as a Ph.D. student in Fall 2021. He was an undergraduate student in Civil Engineering with honors at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar. He is interested in the application of network science to improve the resilience and equity of infrastructure system. His research interests include Human-Infrastructure system dynamics modeling, complex network analysis, and community resilience. In his leisure time, he enjoys swimming, playing basketball, and spending time with friends and family.

Saurabh joined University of Delaware as a Ph.D. student in Fall 2023. He completed his undergraduate at Vellore Institute of Technology, India, after which he obtained his M.S. in Computer Science from Arizona State University. He is interested in building explainable intelligence models to predict and understand the disruptions due to extreme events. His research interests include Graph Neural Networks, Explainable Artificial Intelligence, and Community Resilience.

Xiao joined RESC Lab as a Ph.D. student in Fall 2023. He earned his Bachelor's degree in Management from Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, China. He then acquired his M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Hong Kong. Xiao Qian is interested in understanding the complex relationship between human and built-environment and developing AI-enabled decision-making tools. His research interests include multispectral image denoising, large-scale visual language pre-training, and agent-based modeling.

Yihong is a Senior at the University of Delaware, is pursuing a unique combination of majors in Management Information Systems, Mathematics, and Data Science, complemented by studies at the SWUFE-UD Institute of Data Science in China. Currently focusing on research in Data-Driven Decision Making, he is gearing up for a PhD in the same field. Yihong has been actively involved in AI research and has taken on leadership roles within his academic and professional communities, demonstrating a strong commitment to both academic excellence and community engagement.

We are always looking for strong candidates who is interested in resilient and equitable smart city research. We welcome the applications from civil engineering, computer science/engineering, industrial/systems engineering, applied mathematics, network science, and other related disciplines. Candidates with strong modeling and programming skills are preferred. Interested candidates are welcomed to send a CV and writing samples (e.g., manuscripts or reports) to: sjdong(at)udel.edu.