Academic and Training Program Hub

The Center for Community Resilience Research Innovation and Advocacy (CCRRIA) is an Organized Research Unit under the Program of Public Affairs and Security Studies in the College of Liberal Arts at UTRGV. Established in 2023 as a collaboration with UTRGV’s Department of Sociology, Department of Public Affairs and Security Studies and the Texas Epidemic Public Health Institute. We are a transboundary convergence platform (TCP) connecting and sharing the university’s resilience related knowledge with our most vulnerable populations in the RGV, and simultaneously learning from their wisdom. The concept of the CCRRIA emerged from the creation of the RISE Network at the 2019 RISE Conference, held at the University of Albany, (SUNY). Since then, it has been searching for a better understanding of the role that universities play in the pre and post disaster environments.

The Center for Collective Impact in Earthquake Science (C-CIES), a catalyst project funded by the National Science Foundation, is working toward becoming a full-fledged interdisciplinary research center that focuses on high-impact, low-probability events, with an emphasis on community engagement.C-CIES will develop strategies for better identifying, and potentially quantifying, seismic hazards and will inform many aspects of fundamental earthquake science of broad importance. Using collective impact, C-CIES’s research will prioritize the needs of vulnerable populations that have been historically underserved by current earthquake science, engineering, and public policy. To accomplish its vision and mission, C-CIES will solicit and fund pilot projects that will address critical earthquake science questions with strong social impact and community engagement plans.The pilot projects will be evaluated using the five elements of collective impact: common agenda, mutually reinforcing activities, shared metrics, constant communication, and a backbone organization. These pilot projects will serve as case studies to help develop a strategic plan for how to structure the new center. The projects will also examine the novel topic of citizen science of hazards, along with the ripple effects of diversifying citizen science. We believe a new center using this approach will transform how earthquake and associated hazard science is being conducted, leading to fundamental breakthroughs that will profoundly and positively impact communities throughout the country.

The Center for Health and Environment: Education and Research at Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin is a hub for multidisciplinary environmental health sciences research and education.The center brings together experts from across UT Austin and beyond, and its steering committee includes representatives from the Steve Hicks School of Social Work, College of Pharmacy, Cockrell School of Engineering, Jackson School of Geoscience and College of Natural Sciences. The center also partners with the Office of the Vice President for Research, Scholarship and Creative Endeavors.The center works to improve the health of people locally and globally by exploring the effects of environmental exposures borne by air, water and soil. To address health disparities, the center investigates how these exposures disproportionately affect disadvantaged populations.

The MAE Center started as one of three national earthquake engineering research centers established by the National Science Foundation and its partner institutions. Its current mission is to develop through research, and to disseminate through education and outreach, new integrated approaches necessary to minimize the consequences of future natural and human-made hazards. Integrated interdisciplinary research synthesizing damage across regions, estimating vulnerability across regional and national networks, and identifying different hazards forms the core research activities needed to develop a Multi-hazard Approach to Engineering and to support stakeholder and societal interests in risk assessment and mitigation.

RED Lab is an experimental research space dedicated to studying risk and disasters, and how they involve and evoke impacts on individuals and communities across multiple scales and geographies. We aim to articulate our academic work and practice in contexts that echo resilience and environmental responsibility.The Lab is affiliated with the Geography Program within the Department of Geoscience at Texas Tech University (TTU). We mentor researchers at undergraduate and graduate levels of any field interested in qualitative and interdisciplinary research on the topics of our expertise. We partner with Federal agencies, universities, and research centers to study the dynamics of natural hazards, societal impacts, and disasters. And we are part of the founding Editorial Collective of the Journal of Disaster Studies (Penn Press).RED Lab is committed to the adoption of ethical practices in academic and lab research, which includes the following: actively building an inclusive and diverse community of researchers, students, and collaborators; promoting the participation and dialogue of various different groups; encouraging the involvement of our researchers in broader peace-building agendas.

The Graduate Wind Energy Certificate offers professionals post-baccalaureate level training options in six topic areas relevant to the industry. You may choose to take individual courses or complete five of the class offerings and obtain a Graduate Certificate in Wind Energy. The program has been specifically designed for non-technical professionals who wish to assume managerial responsibilities in the wind energy industry.

The educational objectives of the Wind Science and Engineering (WiSE) Ph.D. program are to provide graduates with the broad education necessary to pursue studies and solve problems related to the detrimental effects of windstorms (hurricanes, tornadoes, thunderstorms, and others), and to take advantage of the wind’s beneficial effects (wind power, natural ventilation, pollution dispersion, etc.).We're focused on education and committed to producing quality graduates with the potential to improve people's everyday lives

The National Wind Institute (NWI) works to solve some of society's most complex problems by supporting convergent research in Energy Systems, Wind Engineering, and Measurement and Simulation. NWI focuses on breaking traditional disciplinary boundaries, assimilating new and diverse ideas, supporting the development and execution of large game-changing research concepts, and cultivating the next generation of leaders.NWI's roots were formed following the 1970 Lubbock Tornado. With the inclusion of engineers, atmospheric scientists, and economists, the multidisciplinary team continued to grow through the early 2000s but remained focused on wind hazard-related research. An expansion into wind energy research began in the early 2000s, along with the development of the multidisciplinary Wind Science and Engineering (WiSE) Ph.D. program in 2003. NWI then evolved further to support related pursuits such as microgrid, battery storage, and grid management related research. In 2019, NWI reorganized to better represent the diversity of ongoing activity within the institute and lay a foundation to answer even bigger challenges in the future.NWI develops and maintains a suite of state-of-the-art research facilities and space, provides access to technical and administrative staff that enable faculty affiliates to successfully execute large and complex research projects, and supports convergent teaming activities. NWI also provides multidisciplinary training to our graduate students to better prepare them to answer today's complex challenges.