Changjie is a planner and statistician whose research emphasis is directed at the simulation of future land-use scenarios and transportation modeling by integrating spatial analytics, High-Performance Computing (HPC), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms.
Ph.D. in Design, Construction, Planning, University of Florida, College of Design, Construction, and Planning
Degree in Architecture, Università IUAV di Venezia
Areas of Focus:
Productive Landscape, Placemaking and Placekeeping, Qualitative Research, Community Design and Planning, Storytelling
Bio:
Dr. Brisotto is an interdisciplinary researcher, urban theorist, and licensed architect from Italy. Currently, she serves as the Assistant Director and Assistant Scholar at the Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER) at the University of Florida (UF). Brisotto holds a Ph.D. in Design, Construction, and Planning from UF and an Architecture degree from the University IUAV of Venice. At the core of Brisotto’s research lies the intersection of urbanism and environmental narratives. Her research focuses on productive landscapes and climate change’s asymmetric impacts on populations and their environments through both contemporary and historical lenses. More recently, she has been conducting research that examines how people engage in self-resilient practices of disaster coping mechanisms. Her main roles at FIBER include working closely with communities within the Florida Resilient Cities program. Her goals include supporting local capacity building, communicating highly technical and scientific research to residents, and educating about community resiliency to facilitate collaborations and partnerships. Additionally, she encompasses the same objective as Program Director of GatorCorps bringing AmeriCorps members across the region to serve communities facing climate risks.
Brisotto has published a book, ‘Re-Imagining Resilient Productive Landscapes: Perspectives from Planning History,’ along with book chapters, double-peer-reviewed papers, proceedings, and presentations at several national and international conferences. She has been teaching History and Theory of Architecture, Urban Design and Planning, and seminars on Spatial Justice. Beyond UF, Brisotto has collaborated with institutions like Morgan State University, Politecnico di Milano, and Drury University, emphasizing a commitment to teaching, research, and service in urban design.
Dr. Jiayang Li is an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of landscape design and climate change adaptation. Her research tackles the challenge of creating landscape change that makes communities more resilient and is welcomed by community members. Currently, Jiayang draws on social science theories and methods to study everyday landscape experiences and community perceptions of novel nature-based solutions. She has published in multiple top-ranked journals including Landscape and Urban Planning and given guest lectures and conferences presentations nationally and internationally. Jiayang earned her Ph.D. in Environment and Sustainability and Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Michigan. She also holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Landscape Architecture from Tongji University in Shanghai, China. Before turning her primary focus to research, she had practiced in design firms including SmithGroup and AECOM.
Savannah College of Art and Design, BA
Kansas State University, MS
State University of New York at Binghamton, Ph.D.
Areas of Focus:
Sustainability (Building Materials, Built Environment Resilience, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Health Sciences, Sustainable Public Policy, Sustainable Architecture and Design)
My research focuses on using Artificial Intelligence and dynamic modeling to evaluate scenarios for preventative designs that reduce risks to human health. This research includes how phenomena such as climate change, which is having a demonstrated effect on infectious conditions and disease epidemiology, impact community health infrastructure and health system resilience. This area of study’s primary purpose is to explore the potentials that predictive Systems Science and Engineering approaches have in informing reliable risk moderation and sustainable system optimization strategies for environmental planning paradigms successful in moderating outside design basis system hazards.
Bio:
Dr. Lisa Platt is the Interior Design department faculty and research representative for the University of Florida’s College of Design Construction and Planning Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER). Her work in research, student mentoring, and teaching is driven by the concept of designing and building proactively adaptive and human-centered environmental systems. Her career in healthcare design and systems improvement analysis has been to discover ways thoughtfully applied translational research can elicit practical innovation for improving human and system resilience. Her experience as a licensed Interior Designer and operations systems analyst has allowed her to collaborate with quality, health, safety, and environment management teams in high-risk industries in the U.S. and internationally. She has also had the benefit of being able to work with health system patients, rehabilitation, and long-term care resident groups around the world seeking ways to use human-centered design for improving individual and population health, safety, and wellbeing.
Dr. Platt’s current research focus is on using Artificial Intelligence and Human Factors for integrating Prevention through Design in healthcare environments. The primary purpose of this study is to explore potentials that predictive Systems Science and Engineering approaches have in informing reliable risk moderation and resilience optimization strategies for environment of care planning paradigms successful in moderating outside design basis system hazards.
Dr. Platt currently teaches the undergraduate Interior Finishes and Materials course and the DCP Doctoral Core 4 seminar focusing on assisting Ph.D. students in dissertation research conceptualization, writing, and leveraging for employment opportunities. She is also currently in the process of developing a graduate-level course for using applied quantitative methods and machine learning for design research.
Her educational background includes a Bachelor of Arts in Interior Design, a Master of Science in Psychology, and a Ph.D. in Systems Science with a focus in Health Systems Engineering.
BA, Washington University in St. Louis
M.Arch and MCP, University of California, Berkeley
Areas of Focus: Sustainability Bio: Jeff Carney is a registered architect and certified city planner working at the interface of housing, neighborhoods, and ecosystems with a focus on climate change adaptation. He is associate professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Florida, director of the Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER), and director of the Florida Resilient Cities program (FRC). Jeff’s work in Florida is focused on the resilience of communities achieved through transdisciplinary and community engaged design processes. His current projects include a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development funded effort to design post-disaster modular housing, and an FRC project to assist the panhandle City of Port St. Joe to recover from Hurricane Michael that is supported by the Jessie Ball Dupont fund. Previously, Jeff was the director of the LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio (CSS) where he led the development of the Louisiana Resiliency Assistance Program (LRAP) that continues to assist communities throughout Louisiana; additionally, he led the design and fabrication of the 10,000sf permanent exhibition for the LSU Center for River Studies called “shifting Foundations” which told the story of coastal Louisiana’s changing landscape and the new paradigms in protection and restoration needed to create a more sustainable coast. He co-directed his team’s award-winning submission for the Changing Course competition entitled “The Giving Delta,” that reimagined Louisiana’s ecological systems and coastal communities in the context of climate change. Shortly before moving to UF Jeff initiated and led the project “Inland from the Coast,” a three-year grant supported by the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Jeff’s work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale and his projects and scholarship have been published widely. His projects have been recognized through awards including the 2018 AIABR Rose Award winner for the Shifting Foundations exhibit; the 2016 New York Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects Merit Award, for “The Giving Delta”; the 2014 APA Planning Excellence Award for Education, for the Louisiana Resilience Assistance Program; the 2012 ACSA Collaborative Practice Award, for the Coastal Sustainability Studio; and the 2011 EDRA Great Places Awards in Design Research for “Measured Change: Tracking Transformations on Bayou Lafourche.” Jeff teaches undergraduate and graduate level architecture studios and multi-disciplinary seminars on resilience design and planning at the building, neighborhood, and regional scale. Jeff received his bachelor’s degree in architecture from Washington University in St. Louis and master’s degrees in both architecture and city and regional planning from the University of California, Berkeley. While at Berkeley, Jeff was awarded the Branner Fellowship to conduct a year-long research project to study the evolution of modernist neighborhood-scale urbanism in Europe, South America, and Asia, an experience which continues to shape his work today.
Ph.D. Construction (Disaster) Management, BArch, BSc Architecture – All Queen’s University Belfast, UK
Areas of Focus:
Sustainability (Built Environment Resilience)
Research:
My research focuses on the injustices and inequalities that are foundational to our social system, and how disasters unveil society and show us what needs to change. At its core, my intellectual pursuits are interrogating what a sustainable social/political/economic future would look like, and demonstrating that we are not on such a pathway.
Bio:
Dr. Jason von Meding is an Associate Professor in Rinker School and a founding faculty member of the Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER). He is a researcher, educator and communicator in disaster studies who joined the University of Florida in 2019. His research is primarily community-centered and highly participatory, focusing on how injustice and inequality are the fundamental drivers of risk in society, and therefore shape disaster impacts.
Before moving to the U.S. he spent 6 years at the University of Newcastle, Australia, where he established the Disaster and Development Research Group and was recognized as Researcher of the Year at the institution level in 2017. His Ph.D. was conferred by the Queen’s University of Belfast in Northern Ireland, where he also spent 3 years on faculty from 2010-2013 and before that trained as an architect in the early 2000s.
Jason has taught students around the world about disasters for over a decade – from the societal root causes of risk to post-disaster professional practice. At the University of Florida, he delivers courses about the history of shelter, housing and sustainable construction. He is Coordinator of CIB Working Commission 120 – Disasters and the Built Environment and is a popular speaker in the disaster studies field. As part of his focus on public facing science communication, he is co-host of the Disasters: Deconstructed Podcast and tweets @vonmeding.
University of Michigan
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Areas of Focus:
Sustainability (Building Energy, Building Materials, Built Environment Resilience, Renewable Energy, Smart Buildings/Cities, Sustainable Architecture and Design, Sustainable Construction, Sustainable Technology)
I am interested in improving the energy as well as the occupant- related health performance of the built environment through advancements in building envelopes
Bio:
Dr. Ryan Sharston is an architect and a civil and environmental engineer. For nearly two decades, he has taught, researched and practiced sustainable design and construction and environmental technologies in various academic and industrial settings.
His research focuses on computational building modeling, building performance evaluation, indoor environmental quality and occupants’ health and well-being. He has taught architectural design studios and building and environmental technologies at the University of Michigan and University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
In his professional practice, he has served as lead engineer and construction manager for numerous projects, with a particular focus on technologically advanced and integrated designs and constructions.
Areas of Focus: Sustainability (Built Environment Resilience, Smart Buildings/Cities) building sustainability through resilient built environment research and better infrastructure planning for emerging technologies to reduce GHG emission.
Bio: Dr. Yan Wang is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Urban & Regional Planning in College of Design, Construction and Planning, University of Florida. She is a founding faculty member for the Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER) and the founder and director of the Urban Agility and Resilience Lab. Her research focuses on developing and applying computational tools to quantity and manage urban resilience in response to disruptions, including hazards and emerging technologies. Over the past decade, Dr. Wang’s has made contributions to answer (i) how resilience can be measured, explained, and enhanced within built communities and (ii) how to achieve information agility and integrity in digital environments. Her pioneering work explores the intersection of urban resilience and urban analytics, particularly the roles of spatial planning and crisis informatics. Recognized as the top-ranked female scholars in urban analytics globally, Dr. Wang has authored over 40 peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers (Google Scholar) and has secured more than $3 million in research funding, including eight prestigious federal awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Prior to UF, Dr. Wang earned her Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Virginia Tech. She also holds a master’s degree in asset valuation (BJTU) and a bachelor’s degree in construction engineering and management (BJTU) from the school of economics and management. She is the recipient of NSF CAREER Award (2025), UF Excellence Awards for Assistant Professors (2022), UF Global Research Fellow (2018), Weather Ready Research Fellowships (Natural Hazard Center, 2021), Mitigation Matters Award (Natural Hazard Center, 2020), ASCE Journal of Management in Engineering Accolade Best Paper Award (2021), UF Research Promotion Initiative Award (2021), UF Great Teaching Certificate (2021), DCP Excellence in Research Award (2021) and Virginia Tech IGEP BioBuild Fellowship (2015-2018).
Her teaching efforts primarily contribute to tailored pedagogies and contextualized curricula for urban analytics within planning programs, particularly for the Urban Analytics Program within the Department of Urban and Regional Planning. She has served on the editorial board of the ASCE Journal of Management in Engineering since 2020 and is the Guest Editor for the Journal of Planning Education and Research’s special issue on AI and Urban Planning (2024-2027).
Urban Resilience; Urban Analytics; Spatial and Infrastructure Planning; Crisis Informatics; Human Dynamics; Responsible AI; Smart and Connected Communities.
Founding Faculty, Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER)
Founder, Urban Agility and Resilience Laboratory
Affiliate Faculty, UF Informatics Institute
Affiliate Faculty, UF Transportation Institute
Affiliate Faculty, Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World
2025 National Science Foundation CAREER Award
University of Florida Excellence Awards for Assistant Professors (2022)
ASCE Journal of Management in Engineering Honorable Mention Award (2021)
University of Florida Research Promotion Initiative Award (2021)
Excellence in Research Award, College of Design, Construction and Planning (2021)
Great Teaching Certificate, UF Center for Teaching Excellence (2021)
Weather Ready Research Fellowships, Natural Hazard Center (NSF &NOAA) (2021)
Mitigation Matters Award, Natural Hazard Center, 2020
Global Research Fellow, by University of Florida, November 8, 2018
Virginia Tech IGEP BioBuild Fellowship, by Virginia Tech, Aug. 2015 – May 2018
2025-2030: CAREER: Generative Deep Learning for Post-Disaster Spatial Regeneration Planning
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (Award #2440023)
Programs: Humans, Disasters, and the Built Environment & Human-Envi & Geographical Scis
2024-2025 PI: RAPID: Assessing Urgent Time Use Dynamics Among Time-Poor Populations in Preparation for Hurricane Helene and Milton
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (Award #2505675)
Program: CMMI-HDBE-Humans, Disasters, and the Built Environment
2024-2025 PI: Investigating Neighborhood Mobility Resilience and Aging Vulnerability under Environmental Shocks
Sponsor: National Institute on Aging, Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center at the University of Florida
Program: Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center (OAIC) Pilot Study
2023-2026 Co-PI: Collaborative Research: SaTC: CORE: Medium: Information Integrity: A User-centric Intervention
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (Award #2323794)
Program: CNS-Secure &Trustworthy Cyberspace
2023-2026 PI: Spatial Explanation and Planning for Resilience of Community-Based Small Businesses to Environmental Shocks
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (Award #2316450)
Program: CMMI-HDBE-Humans, Disasters, and the Built Environment
2022-2023 Faculty: GulfSouth Studio
Sponsor: The National Academy of Sciences Engineering and Medicine
2021-2022 PI: SCC-PG: SmartCurb: Building Smart Urban Curb Environments
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (Award #2124858)
Program: Smart and Connected Communities – Planning Grants
2020-2021 PI: RAPID: Dynamic Interactions between Human and Information in Complex Online Environments Responding to SARS-COV-2.
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (Award #2028012)
Program: CMMI-Humans, Disasters and Built Environment
2020-2021 Co-PI: SCC-PG: Coordinated Safety Management Across Smart Communities
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (Award #1951816)
Program: Smart and Connected Communities – Planning Grants
2018-2019 PI (Sub award): RAPID: Discovering Crises within Crises – Real-Time Detection, Tracking and Visualization of Emergent Crises in Hurricanes.
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (Award #1760645)
Program: CISE-Information & Intelligent Systems
2021-2022 PI: Weather Ready Research Fellowship: Assessing the Impact of Geo-Targeted Warning Messages on Residents Evacuation Decisions Before a Hurricane
Sponsor: Natural Hazards Center (flow from NSF and NOAA)
2021-2021 Key Personnel: Upper Suwannee River Resilience Columbia County and The Town of White Springs
Sponsor: Florida Department of Economic Opportunity
2021 PI: Assessing Disaster Impact in Real Time (ADIR): A Data-Driven System Integrating Human, Hazards, and the Built Environment
Sponsor: UF Office of the Provost-Research Promotion Initiative Award
2020-2021 PI: Examining Digital Vulnerability to Flooding Among Subsidized Housing Residents in Florida.
Sponsor: Natural Hazards Center-Mitigation Matters Research Program.