2018 Hurricane Season: LSU Hurricane Experts Available

Updated 06/1/2018

BATON ROUGE – LSU has a number of experts available to discuss topics related to storm preparedness, climate, economic impacts, recovery efforts and more during the 2018 hurricane season. Please check here as this list will be updated.

To schedule interviews, contact 225-578-5685/eballa1@lsu.edu or 225-578-3870/asatake@lsu.edu.

Climate Extremes

Barry Keim, LSU Department of Geography and Anthropology Richard J. Russell Professor and Louisiana State Climatologist
Areas of Expertise: Climate extremes including heavy rainfall and hurricanes; detection of climate change and its impacts; statistical analysis of extremes and Probable Maximum Precipitation.
225-578-6170
keim@lsu.edu

Nina Lam, LSU Department of Environmental Sciences professor
Areas of Expertise: Flooding in inland communities across the U.S. and resilience to natural disasters. Wrote The Conversation article: Americans who live far from coasts should also be worried about flooding.
225-578-6197
nlam@lsu.edu

 

Human Impacts 

Craig Colten, LSU Department of Geography & Anthropology professor
Areas of Expertise: Historical and social geography of hazards. Wrote The Conversation article: Suburban sprawl and poor preparation worsened flood damage in Louisiana. 
225-578-6180
ccolten@lsu.edu

Michael Pasquier, LSU Religious Studies and History associate professor
Areas of Expertise: history and culture of a fishing community outside the levee-protected system of coastal Louisiana; coastal Louisiana oral histories; and the history of religion in the Mississippi River Delta from the colonial period to the present.
225-578-2271
mpasquier@lsu.edu

Tim Slack, LSU Department of Sociology professor
Areas of Expertise: Community vulnerability and resiliency; disparities in impacts across social groups; social stratification and social demography.
225-578-1116
slack@lsu.edu

 

Disaster Recovery and Resilience

Michelle Meyer, LSU Department of Geography & Anthropology assistant professor
Areas of Expertise: Disaster recovery; nonprofits/charitable response; environmental justice; technological disasters; evacuation; and vulnerable populations.
LSU Department of Sociology
218-791-8621 (cell)
225-578-1115
mmeyer@lsu.edu

Brant Mitchell, LSU Stephenson Disaster Management Institute director
Areas of Expertise: Disaster response and evacuations.
225-578-5939
bmitch9@lsu.edu

Claudette Reichel, LSU AgCenter professor and extension housing specialist and LaHouse Resource Center director
Areas of Expertise: Sustainable, resilient housing; residential building science; energy management; indoor air quality; disaster mitigation and restoration; universal design. LaHouse Resource Center is an educational sustainable housing demonstration facility: http://www.lsuagcenter.com/lahouse
225-202-6593 (cell)
225-578-4400
creichel@agcenter.lsu.edu

Carol Friedland, LSU Bert S. Turner Department of Construction Management associate professor
Areas of Expertise: Hazard-resistant construction and mitigation; performance of housing and other built infrastructure subjected to natural hazards; combined wind and flood interactions on structures; post-event data acquisition; remote sensing of building damage; hazard-resistant and sustainable construction; integration of Geographic Information Systems, or GIS, in hazards research; hazard mitigation planning and mitigation decision-making; and lost estimation.
225-578-1155
Friedland@lsu.edu

Aly-Mousaad Aly, LSU Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering assistant professor
Areas of Expertise: wind impact on the build environment; innovative mitigation strategies to build more resilient communities.
225-578-6654
aly@lsu.edu

Edward Richards, LSU Law Center professor and director of the Climate Change Law and Policy project
Areas of Expertise: Flood insurance plans; flood maps; land use issues, extreme weather, coastal restoration, and climate change. He produced the Law Review articles:  Applying Life Insurance Principles to Coastal Property Insurance to Incentivize Adaptation to Climate Change, 43 Environmental Affairs Law Review 427–461 (2016) and The Hurricane Katrina Levee Breach Litigation: Getting the First Geoengineering Liability Case Right. He maintains the Climate Change Law and Policy Project Blog.
richards@lsu.edu

Traci Birch, LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio interim managing director and School of Architecture assistant professor
Areas of Expertise: resiliency in community design and planning and coastal community development.
225-578-4990
tbirch@lsu.edu

Children & Family

Anna Long, LSU Department of Psychology assistant professor
Areas of Expertise: Child and school psychology. She wrote the tip sheet: Helping Kids Cope with Traumatic Events and is a licensed psychologist in the state of Louisiana.
225-578-7605
along@lsu.edu

Economic Impact

Stephen Barnes, LSU Department of Economics associate professor of research and Economics and Policy Research Group director
Areas of Expertise: Regional, labor and health economics; public finance; applied econometric and environmental-related studies.
225-578-3783
barnes@lsu.edu

James Richardson
Areas of Expertise: Ports; regional and energy economics; state and local taxation; forecasting; public policy.
LSU Department of Economics and Public Administration Institute professor
225-578-6745
parich@lsu.edu

David E. Dismukes, LSU Center for Energy Studies director and College of the Coast and Environment professor
Areas of Expertise: economic impacts of tropical storms and hurricanes on Gulf of Mexico oil and gas infrastructure, production and transport; power and utilities infrastructure.
dismukes@lsu.edu

Food Safety

Wennie Xu, LSU AgCenter assistant professor
Area of Expertise: Natural disaster food safety 
302-229-8499 (cell)
225-578-3997
wenqing.xu@agcenter.lsu.edu

 

Floods, Rivers and Storm Surge

Scott C. Hagen, LSU Center for Coastal Resiliency director, Louisiana Sea Grant Laborde Chair; LSU Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering professor
Areas of Expertise: Tide, wind-wave and hurricane storm surge modeling; digital elevation model development; flood-plain analysis; coastal dynamics of sea level rise and biogeophysical modeling.
225-578-4303
shagen@lsu.edu

Frank Tsai, LSU Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering professor
Areas of Expertise: Watershed and groundwater flow, fate and transport modeling in aquifer systems and surface water.
225-578-4246
Ftsai@lsu.edu

Richard Keim, LSU School of Renewable Natural Resources associate professor
Areas of Expertise: Hydrology of forested wetlands and watersheds; management of bottomland and coastal forests; hydrological interactions between forests, soils and the atmosphere; scaling of hydrological processes; dendrochronology.
225 578-4169
rkeim@lsu.edu 

Clint Willson, LSU Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Mike N. Dooley P.E. professor and director of the Center for River Studies
Areas of Expertise: Watershed hydrology; physical and numerical modeling of rivers.
225-578-8672
Cwillson@lsu.edu

John Pardue. LSU Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Elizabeth Howell Stewart professor and director of the Hazardous Substance Research Center
Areas of Expertise: Fate and transport of chemical contaminants during hurricanes and floods, handling debris after disasters and impacts of storm surge on industrial facilities.
225-578-8661
jpardue@lsu.edu

Satellites and Data Visualization

Nan Walker, LSU Earth Scan Laboratory director and Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences professor
Areas of Expertise: Ocean temperatures and heat content relationships to ocean eddies, the Loop Current and hurricane intensity in the Gulf of Mexico and other ocean basins; impacts of storms on coastal circulation and coastal land changes; and satellite remote sensing.
225-578-2395
nwalker@lsu.edu

 

Photo, Documents and Book Restoration

Ed Benoit , LSU School of Library & Information Science assistant professor
Areas of Expertise: Recovering damaged photos and other items; documenting natural disasters, cultural heritage, archival process and audiovisual preservation.
225-578-1469 
414-336-4966 (mobile) 
ebenoit@lsu.edu

Communication and Social Media 

Lance Porter, LSU Manship School of Mass Communication professor and director of the Social Media Analysis and Creation Lab
Areas of Expertise: Social media effects and sharing in times of disaster and emergency. 
225-573-7485 
lporter@cct.lsu.edu

Andrea Miller, Manship School of Mass Communication associate dean and professor
Areas of Expertise: national and local media coverage of crisis and tragedy; media coverage of man-made and natural disasters.
225-578-3146
almiller@lsu.edu

Animal Welfare, Pets and Wildlife

Mustajab Mirza, LSU assistant professor of Equine Surgery
Areas of Expertise: Horses; equine surgery.
225-578-9575
kabooter@lsu.edu

Javier Nevarez, LSU professor of Zoological Medicine
Areas of Expertise: Alligators; Gulf Coast wildlife.
225-578-9657
jnevare@lsu.edu

Kristen Healy, LSU Department of Entomology assistant professor
Areas of Expertise: Medical and public health entomology; mosquitoes; honeybees.
khealy@agcenter.lsu.edu

Prosanta Chakrabarty, LSU Museum of Natural Sciences curator of fishes and Department of Biological Sciences professor
Areas of Expertise: deep sea fish in Gulf of Mexico and systematics of marine and freshwater fishes.
225-578-3079
prosanta@lsu.edu

Additional Links:
LSU AgCenter’s information on how to best prepare your home, family, pets and property: http://www.lsuagcenter.com/topics/family_home/hazards_and_threats/are_you_ready

Tips for Pet Owners: http://www.lsu.edu/vetmed/vet_news/tips_for_pet_owners.php

Tips for Horse Owners: http://www.lsu.edu/vetmed/vet_news/tips_for_horse_owners.php

What to Do if You Encounter Wildlife: http://www.lsu.edu/vetmed/disaster_preparedness/wildlife.php.

Disaster Preparedness: http://www.lsu.edu/vetmed/disaster_preparedness

 

 

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Contact Alison Satake
LSU Media Relations
225-578-3870
asatake@lsu.edu

 

Ernie Ballard
LSU Media Relations
225-578-5685
eballa1@lsu.edu