James Kirby

James Kirby is the Edward C. Davis Professor at the University of Delaware's Department of Ocean Engineering. His research focuses on coastal and ocean disasters, including tsunami hazard assessment, wave dynamics, sediment transport, and nearshore hydrodynamics. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Delaware and Master's and Bachelor's degrees from Brown University.

His work emphasizes understanding extreme coastal events through advanced modeling and field experiments. Key areas include tsunamis generated by submarine landslides, meteo-tsunamis, and the impact of wave breaking on coastal environments. He develops numerical tools like Boussinesq-type models (e.g., FUNWAVE-TVD) and subgrid approaches to simulate complex phenomena such as salt marsh hydrodynamics and artificial ponding mitigation.

Dr. Kirby collaborates on large-scale initiatives like the Rocky Shores Experiment and Simulation (ROXSI) to study wave-rough bed interactions. His contributions bridge computational methods with real-world applications in coastal risk assessment and infrastructure resilience.

He has advised numerous projects on tidal hydrodynamics, morphodynamic feedbacks, and acoustic-gravity wave propagation. Current efforts explore epistemic uncertainties in coastal hazard modeling and improving accuracy of landslide tsunami simulations.