CONVERGE Team

Rachel Adams

Candace Evans

Candace M. Evans (she/they) is a research professional at the National Science Foundation-funded CONVERGE initiative and the Natural Hazards Center. Evans first joined CONVERGE and the Natural Hazards Center in 2019 as a graduate research assistant, and has since served as the co-lead developer for the CONVERGE Training Modules Series. In addition, she supports Dr. Lori Peek with the CONVERGE Leadership Corps, helping to facilitate and coordinate monthly meetings and deliverables. Most recently, Evans served as the Observation Team Lead for a two-day Tabletop Exercise at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, GA, aimed at improving the transdisciplinary coordination, data collection, and information sharing of rapid disaster reconnaissance and research efforts of the Leadership Corps. Evans, along with other members of the Observation Team, conducted observation and note taking throughout the exercise, and, following the exercise conclusion, led the development of a Summary of Conclusions that highlighted key takeaways and recommendations from the two-day exercise.

Evans is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She received her bachelor’s degree in sociology and psychology from McMurry University in 2016 and her master’s degree in applied sociology from the University of Massachusetts-Boston in 2018. Her dissertation research is focused the construction of medical knowledge and expertise during public health emergencies. Evans is also actively engaged in activist and advocacy circles for chronic illness and disability rights, where she draws on sociological insights and her own embodied experiences to raise awareness for invisible chronic illness and disability conditions and the unique needs and challenges of these groups during disaster and disaster recovery.

Jennifer Tobin

Jennifer Tobin is assistant director of the Natural Hazards Center, University of Colorado Boulder. She is a research associate for the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure CONVERGE facility, the National Science Foundation-funded Social Science Extreme Events Research (SSEER) network, and the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Extreme Events Research (ISEEER) platform. Tobin is also a co-editor of the CONVERGE Extreme Events Research Check Sheets Series.

Tobin has been involved in a wide range of funded research projects focusing on topics such as children and schools, disaster risk reduction, and community resilience following disasters. Currently, Tobin is the administrator of the Natural Hazards Center’s long standing Quick Response Research Award Program, funded by the National Science Foundation. She also administers special calls for research funded by additional federal partners. Tobin is collaborating on a United States Geological Survey-funded project focused on Earthquake Early Warning and Schools and holds a secretariat position and is co-chair of the Justice, Equity, and Future Leadership Committee for the North American Alliance of Hazards and Disasters Research Institutes (NAAHDRI).

Tobin received her PhD from the department of sociology at Colorado State University. Her dissertation research focused on educational continuity following the 2013 Colorado Front Range Floods. She earned her bachelor’s in sociology and women’s studies in 2005 and master’s in sociology in 2008. Her master’s thesis research drew on qualitative interviews with local disaster recovery workers and single mothers who were displaced to Colorado after Hurricane Katrina. Tobin is the recipient of the 2014 Beth B. Hess Memorial Dissertation Scholarship.

Brigid Mark is a graduate research assistant at the Natural Hazards Center and a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is the data manager for the Social Science Extreme Events Research (SSEER) network and the Natural Hazards Center’s Quick Response Research Award Program.

In 2023, Brigid earned a Master of Arts in Sociology from the University of Colorado Boulder and in 2020, she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies and Biology from the College of Saint Benedict and St. John’s University. Her research interests include climate justice, social movements, Indigenous studies, and qualitative research methods.

Melissa Villarreal

Melissa received her PhD at the University of Colorado (CU) Boulder from the Department of Sociology. Her work primarily centers around the post-disaster recovery trajectories of vulnerable populations, though she has led and contributed to several different projects throughout the years. She has worked on projects looking at women’s experiences during and after disaster, structural vulnerability and reproductive health access for Mexican-origin women, and parental notification and access to abortion among minors. In addition to her own research endeavors, Melissa is a research assistant at the Natural Hazards Center at CU Boulder, working on several research projects concerning the enhancement of the ethical quality of disaster research, the increase of diversity in the hazards and disaster field, and the reduction of post-disaster vulnerabilities for marginalized communities.

Her dissertation was an intersectional, multi-level analysis of Mexican-origin women and their post-disaster recovery trajectories in the context of cumulative disaster impacts. This project was based in Houston, Texas and focused on recovery from Hurricane Harvey, which made landfall in 2017. Melissa was awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP) in 2019, giving her a full three years of funding to conduct her work in Houston. In 2021, Melissa was awarded the American Sociological Association (ASA) Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (DDRIG) to continue this project. She also received other accolades––including the CU Boulder’s Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences (CARTSS) Graduate Student Award, CU Boulder’s Beverly Sears Graduate Student Award, and several other small grants from CU Boulder’s Department of Sociology and Institute of Behavioral Science––in support of this research. In 2021, she was selected to be a Kinder Scholar for Rice University’s Kinder Scholar Program. The Kinder Scholar Program, located in Houston, selects researchers, post-doctoral fellows, and graduate students who conduct high quality research in the area. She was also a 2021 Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Equity & Inclusion Fellow.

Melissa is a William Averette Anderson Fund (BAF) Fellow, which is dedicated to advancing the success of minority professionals in the hazards and disasters field. As a BAF Fellow, she has attended, participated in, and helped to organize professional development workshops and webinars. She has held several leadership positions in the BAF Student Executive Board, taking responsibility for planning and moderating webinars, drafting and disseminating the BAF newsletter, and organizing and coordinating the BAF’s annual fundraiser.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-villarreal/

Haorui Wu

Haorui Wu is a research affiliate at the Natural Hazards Center and CONVERGE. He is the current Canada Research Chair in Resilience, serving as an assistant professor in the Faculty of Health at Dalhousie University. He earned his Ph.D. in interdisciplinary studies from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, engaging principles of the four disciplines: social work, community and regional planning, landscape architecture, and architecture.

With the interdisciplinary background, his over 16-year community-based interdisciplinary research and emerging practice have nuancedly explored disaster-driven redevelopment of human and non-human settlements in the global context of climate change, disaster, and willful acts of violence. His research and practice are guided through the following two core values of human-environment interaction:

(i) Environmental justice: providing benefits of built environment to under-served populations (e.g., Indigenous and ethnic minorities, immigrants and refugees, low-income and the homeless); and 

(ii) Social justice: empowering human dignity (especially for vulnerable and marginalized groups) and advancing their physical health, mental wellness, and overall well-being in human settlement renewal. 

Wu’s innovative socio-ecological protection strategies aim to stimulate the transdisciplinary application of engineering, social, cultural, ecological, economic, and political dimensions into the empowerment of grassroots-led community development initiatives that contribute to the enhancement of inhabitants and co-inhabitants’ health and well-being, advancing resilience and sustainability at the individual, family, and community levels, and promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion in community development.

Musabber Ali Chisty is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder and a graduate research assistant at the Natural Hazards Center. He also serves as the social media manager for the National Science Foundation-funded CONVERGE facility. In this role, Musabber maintains all social media outlets of CONVERGE posting to  Twitter/X, Instagram, and LinkedIn. He regularly develops infographics, posters, and written posts for each of these social media outlets.

Musabber completed his bachelor’s and master’s degree in Disaster Management at the University of Dhaka Bangladesh. His main research interest is in human behavior in the disaster response and recovery period, social vulnerabilities, intersectionality, disaster preparedness, and the sociology of humanitarian organizations. Musabber has published in these areas in outlets such as the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction (IJDRR), Disaster Prevention and Management (DPM), Health Science Report, Plos One, Sustainability, and Water, among others.