Jingya Wang, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Researcher
CHEER Hub
Natural hazards · infrastructure systems · decision-making under uncertainty
Google Scholar
LinkedIn
wangjy@udel.edu
About Me
My research focuses on decision-making under deep uncertainty, connecting hazards, infrastructure systems, and human behavior to inform policy design.
I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at the CHEER Hub within the Disaster Research Center. I work with Rachel Davidson and Linda Nozick on computational models of disaster risk, integrating hazards, infrastructure, human behavior, and policy to understand how interventions shape risk over time.
I earned my Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University, advised by David Johnson. My doctoral work focused on adaptive infrastructure strategies using reinforcement learning, and contributed to risk assessment models used in Louisiana’s Comprehensive Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast.
My work has been recognized through research awards, competitive funding, and professional leadership. I have served as Chair of the Engineering and Infrastructure Specialty Group of the Society for Risk Analysis and was named an NSF Ocean Decade Champion.
News
Jul 2026 — Our work on multi-stakeholder risk and land-use planning will be presented at the 13th U.S. National Conference on Earthquake Engineering (13NCEE), Portland, OR, examining how development dynamics reshape long-term disaster risk.
May 2026 — Research spotlight presentation at the NHERI Computational Symposium on computational methods for modeling long-term sequences of hazard losses and their implications for recovery and resilience.
Mar 2026 — Two first-authored papers accepted:
- Stakeholder Dynamics in Disaster Mitigation Funding (International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction)
- Optimization-Based Event-Loss Scenario Generation (Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems)
Dec 2025 — Presented first-authored research at the Society for Risk Analysis Annual Meeting on how land-use planning and multi-stakeholder dynamics shape disaster risk and its distribution.