Tracy Kijewski-Correa

Biography & Research

Tracy Kijewski-Correa is the William J. Pulte Director of the Pulte Institute for Global Development in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, where she also was the founding co-director of the school’s Integration Lab (i-Lab). She also serves as the Frank M. Freimann Professor of Structural Engineering and Hazard Resilience in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences. She is a faculty fellow at the Kellogg Institute, Fitzgerald Institute for Real Estate, and Environmental Change Initiative, while also serving as the President-Elect of the American Association for Wind Engineering and a board member of the Applied Technology Council. 

Kijewski-Correa is  a leading figure in the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI). She currently serves as the inaugural director of the Structural Extreme Event Reconnaissance (StEER) network, assessing the impacts of over five dozen disasters globally using novel sensing modalities and advances in data science. This includes advancing localized assessment efforts in Haiti following the 2021 Nippes Earthquake to inform housing recovery recommendations to the Government of Haiti through the World Bank. Leveraging these and other open data sources, she is similarly leading the development of regional simulation tools for hurricane risk assessment through the NHERI Computational Simulation Center (SimCenter). Her work further explores how to effectively integrate field observations, simulations and experiments to advance stakeholder-engaged research as a co-investigator in the design of a National Full-Scale Testing Infrastructure for Community Hardening in Extreme Wind, Surge, and Wave Events (NICHE), a major research infrastructure to experimentally simulate climatological hazards at unprecedented scales and intensities.

This work complements her ongoing interdisciplinary research on housing recovery after major disasters and uptake of climate-adaptive measures. She has worked with leading organizations like Catholic Relief Services and Habitat for Humanity International to evaluate the effectiveness of their disaster-risk reduction programs. Her expertise in housing vulnerability was informed by her longitudinal studies of major disasters including the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami in Thailand and Indonesia, the 2010 and 2021 Earthquakes in Haiti, Hurricane Matthew (also in Haiti) and Hurricane Laura (2020) in Louisiana. Her research on these events has informed both policy and practice, most notably through the housing model deployed in Haiti through her Engineering2Empower initiative, as well as her service on the National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine consensus study on Compounding Disasters in Gulf Coast Communities, 2020-2021. She continues to advise the Gulf Research Program’s initiatives for resilient communities.

Her contributions have been recognized by awards from the American Society of Civil Engineering, American Political Science Association, Institution of Civil Engineers, International Association for Wind Engineering and American Association for Wind Engineering. Kijewski-Correa is formally trained as a Civil Engineer with a specialization in Structural Engineering, earning her Bachelor of Science, Master of Science, and Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame.

Recognitions and Awards

• Michael Gaus Distinguished Service Award, American Association for Wind Engineering
• Provost's All-Faculty Team (2023)

Recent Work

• "Before and after disaster: homeowner protective actions in a changing climate" (International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction)
• "Economic incentives for coastal homeowner adaptation to climate change" (Climate Policy)

News & Media

• Tracy Kijewski-Correa appointed the Frank M. Freimann Professor of Structural Engineering and Hazard Resilience
• Tracy Kijewski-Correa, president-elect, American Association for Wind Engineering
• "Fr. Ted Said: Being a Bridge-Builder" (ThinkND)
• "Homes are increasingly at risk from floods. Elevation can help" (NPR)
• "Protective actions need regulatory support to fully defend homeowners and coastal communities, study finds"
• "Is it time for Anderson Cooper and other reporters to come in from the hurricanes? "(CBC)
• "ND Expert: Hurricanes like Milton, Helene are the new normal"
• "Climate-proofing can lower your bills. Why people still aren’t doing it" (Policygenius)
• "A California-style approach could save Florida homes during hurricanes" (Newsweek)
• "The US isn’t ready for stronger hurricanes, experts say. How structures are built could help" (USA Today)
• "Notre Dame engineers work to build climate-resilient homes"
• "In race against hurricane season, engineers launch survey to study incentives for climate-resilient homes" (Notre Dame News)