Faculty

Jeffrey Carney

AIA, AICP

FIBER Director Professor Architecture j.carney@ufl.edu, AH154

Adaptation Planning

Computational Support Tools

Studio-Based Design Education

Climate Hazards

Ecological Modeling and Design

Jeffrey is a registered architect and certified urban planner working at the interface of housing, neighborhoods, ecosystems, and hazards, with a focus on community-scale adaptation. He has led over 45 funded research projects totaling more than $14 million. His work has been recognized nationally with numerous state and national awards in architecture, planning, and landscape architecture. His projects have been widely published and exhibited, including at the Venice Biennale. Jeff earned 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, he was awarded the Branner Fellowship to conduct a year-long research project studying the evolution of modernist neighborhood design in Europe, South America, and Asia—an experience that continues to shape his work today.

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Ryan Sharston

PhD

Assistant Professor Architecture Construction Management r.sharston@ufl.edu, AH246

Adaptive Environment Design

Short and Long Term Resilience

Affordable Modular Housing

Resilient Communities

Sharston’s interdisciplinary expertise is in architectural design, civil engineering, building construction and management, and advanced building technologies. His most recent major research effort was to develop an advanced and adaptive building envelope system that automatically adjusts the amount of intake natural light and solar heat gain in order to improve building environmental performance. Through the self-morphing “smart materials”, he is developing a new generation of adaptive shading systems, which are responsive to changing environmental conditions in real time without manual, mechanical and/or wireless controls. As a faculty member of FIBER, he is developing methods and strategies to advance the resilience of the built environment through improving its “flexibility” and responsiveness toward climatic and environmental conditions.

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Jason von Meding

PhD

Associate Director & Engagement Lead Associate Professor Construction Management jason.vonmeding@ufl.edu, RINKER344

Psychology of Disaster Risk

Social Justice

Community Vulnerability

Disaster Behavior

Community Centered Research

Jason von Meding is an architect turned disaster studies author and educator who centers the experiences, knowledges and strengths of affected communities in his work. He focuses on how injustice and inequality create uneven and discriminatory disaster risk in society, and how local collaborative work can affect change. He is an Associate Professor and a founding faculty member of the Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER) at the University of Florida and has 15 years of experience of leading interdisciplinary research, pedagogy and practice around the world. He is Executive Director of GatorCorps, a national service program building resilience in Floridian communities. He is the co-host of Disasters: Deconstructed Podcast, a public education endeavor since 2019. Outside of work, he enjoys literature, cooking for family/friends, playing soccer in the Gainesville, FL rec league, being a robotics coach, martial arts, speed-cubing, and building things.

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Yan Wang

PhD

Associate Professor Landscape Architecture yanw@ufl.edu, AH454

Urban Resilience

Urban Analytics

Healthy Cities

Smart Communities

Spatial Planning

Crisis Informatics

Responsible AI

Dr. Yan Wang is an Associate 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 and has secured more than $3 million in research funding, including eight prestigious federal awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

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Lisa Platt

PhD, MS, CSSBB, EDAC

Technology Lead & Assistant Professor Interior Design lisaplatt@ufl.edu, AH334

Building Materials

Built Environment Resilience

Systems Engineering

Environmental Health Sciences

Sustainable Public Policy

Sustainable Architecture and Design

Dr. Lisa Sundahl Platt is an Assistant Professor of Interior Design and Research Faculty at the Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER), University of Florida. She is the creator of the SAMPL (Sustainable Adaptive Material Performance Level) framework and directs the SAMPL Lab at FIBER. Her research centers on the impact of built environment design, with a special emphasis on materiality resilience, on human health and well-being. Dr. Sundahl Platt uses artificial intelligence and complex modeling to forecast outcomes and inform healthier, more sustainable environments. With over 25 years of experience as a licensed interior designer and international consultant, she brings extensive practical insight to her work. Her interdisciplinary background in interior design, psychology, and systems science supports her mission to create living environments that are safe, supportive, sustainable, and resilient.

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Jiayang Li

PhD

Assistant Professor Landscape Architecture jiayangli@ufl.edu, AH440

Nature Based Solutions

Community Resilience

Landscape Design

Landscape Perception

Aesthetics

Jiayang is an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of landscape architecture and climate change adaptation. With a keen interest in everyday landscape experiences and human perceptions of ecological landscape design, her research focuses on the human dimensions of ecological design, with the goal of informing nature-based solutions that enhance climate resilience and adaptation while creating enjoyable outdoor environments in local communities. Currently, Jiayang integrates design thinking and social science methods to work on three topics: (1) Perceived social and cultural benefits of novel nature-based solutions; (2) Risk perception and sense of security in the context of urban flooding and adaptation; and (3) Community engagement in interdisciplinary and action research projects. 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 firms including SmithGroup and AECOM.

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Carla Brisotto

PhD

Design Lead & Assistant Professor Architecture c.brisotto@ufl.edu, AH252

Urbanism

Productive and Cultural Landscapes

Community Design

Landscape Storytelling

Dr. Carla Brisotto is an Assistant Professor of Urbanism in the School of Architecture at the University of Florida, where she is also core faculty at the Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER). Her research explores the intersection of environmental design, urban design, and community design, with a particular focus on the urban/rural interface. Dr. Brisotto’s work centers on design anthropology as a tool for understanding and addressing the making of new places within conflicting spatial needs. Her research projects examine community resilience strategies to overcome perpetual risk and the evolving relationship between agricultural landscapes and urbanization through local and international case studies. Dr. Brisotto earned her Ph.D. in Design, Construction, and Planning from the University of Florida and holds a Master’s degree in Architecture from Istituto di Architettura IUAV di Venezia in Italy. Her work bridges academic research, design practice, and community collaboration, with exhibitions at the Venice Architecture Biennale and ongoing partnerships with communities throughout Florida’s Gulf Coast.

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Andrea Galinski

ASLA, CFM

Education Lead & Assistant Professor Landscape Architecture andrea.galinski@ufl.edu, AH442

Built Environment Resilience

Climate Change Adaptation

Resilient Affordable Housing

Coastal Planning

Andrea is an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at University of Florida Department of Landscape Architecture. Andrea’s passion is to advance climate resilient design and planning in teaching and research. She teaches foundational coursework and interdisciplinary design studios with a concentration on issues of climate change, equity, and other critical topics. Andrea’s research explores the nexus between climate change and affordable housing. Her research has been supported by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine Gulf Research Program (NASEM GRP), National Science Foundation (NSF), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Florida Sea Grant (FSG), Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP), Florida Housing Finance Corporation (FHFC), and others. Andrea has a Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA) from Louisiana State University’s Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture. She has transdisciplinary Bachelor of Philosophy (B.Ph.) degree in “Human Ecology” from Penn State University. She currently lives in Gainesville, FL with her husband, two children, a dog, two cats, and a revolving flock of suburban chickens.

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Maria Watson

PhD

Assistant Professor Construction Management & Shimberg Center maria.watson@ufl.edu, RINKER203

Disaster Recovery

Efficacy of Disaster Programs

Interdependencies in Housing and Infrastructure

Maria Watson is an Assistant Professor in the M.E. Rinker, Sr, School of Construction Management and affiliated researcher with the Shimberg Center for Housing Studies. Before coming to the University of Florida, she was a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning and Hazard Reduction Recovery Center at Texas A&M University. She has degrees in Urban Planning from The Ohio State University and Texas A&M University. Dr. Watson’s research focuses on the factors impacting community recovery after disaster events, particularly interdependencies between infrastructure, housing, and businesses. She is particularly interested in the effectiveness of disaster programs and how these programs can be structured to better meet recovery needs. Watson has been a part of multiple interdisciplinary disaster recovery research efforts in Texas, Louisiana and North Carolina after Hurricanes Ike, Harvey, Matthew, Florence, Laura, and Delta. She has received grants from the National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Federal Emergency Management Agency for her research.

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Research Staff

Stacey Dolan

AWB

Research Coordinator Engineering sdolan@ufl.edu, AH160

Coastal Resilience

Climate Change

Ecology

Biodiversity

Nature-Based Solutions

Stacey Dolan has an interdisciplinary background in engineering, ecology, and wildlife biology. Prior to joining FIBER, she worked as a renewable energy life cycle assessment (LCA) analyst at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), a shorebird biological science technician with Mass Audubon, an invasive plant mapping and management technician with the Town of West Newberry, Massachusetts, and a research coordinator in the UF Center for Coastal Solutions. Stacey supports project management for the Florida Digital Twin initiative and program management for FIBER.

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Christian Calle F.

PhD

Assistant Scholar Architecture callefigueroac@ufl.edu, AH160

Adaptive Spatial Strategies

Digital Tools

Climate Resilience

Public Life

Coastal Communities

Christian Calle is an architect and urban researcher with over 15 years of international experience. His work has focused on urban redevelopment processes in a variety of contexts, from reurbanization of informal settlements in Latin America to complex transformation projects in Switzerland and Germany. His practice emphasizes experimental housing typologies, digital tools, and workflows for urban design, driven by a strong interest in how spatial configuration influences human behavior.Currently, Christian concentrates on climate-hazard resilience for coastal communities in Florida, leading redevelopment studies in several Gulf Coast areas. His present work incorporates digital technologies to understand and communicate the potential impacts of coastal natural hazards on urban environments, guiding spatial strategies that promote community adaptation and flood resilience.

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Changjie Chen

PhD

Assistant Scientist Landscape Architecture chj.chen@ufl.edu, AH160

Land Use

Transportation Modeling

Digital Twins

Urban Resilience

GIS

Changjie is a computational urbanist studying the spatial structure and functional dynamics of cities, with a focus on building scalable and intelligent urban digital twins for modeling, simulation, and planning decision support. His work integrates geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, spatial econometrics, artificial intelligence (AI), and high-performance computing (HPC) to fuse large-scale, multi-sector urban data with real-time sensor streams into high-fidelity representations of cities across space and time. Leveraging cloud-based data infrastructures, 3D geospatial data, and smart city ontologies, he develops generative AI pipelines that rapidly reconstruct immersive cityscapes and agentic AI systems that autonomously reason about urban complexity, enabling scenario testing, agent-based experimentation, and the simulation of current and future urban conditions.

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