Tracy Kijewski-Correa

Tracy Kijewski-Correa serves as the William J. Pulte Director of the Pulte Institute for Global Development and Professor of Engineering and Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame's Keough School of Global Affairs. She directs the NSF-funded Structural Engineering Extreme Event Reconnaissance (StEER) network and maintains affiliations with the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, Environmental Change Initiative, and Real Estate Institute.

Her educational background includes a B.S. (1997), M.S. (2000), and Ph.D. (2003), all from the University of Notre Dame. This foundation supports her interdisciplinary approach bridging engineering, social science, and policy development.

Kijewski-Correa pioneers research in disaster risk reduction and resilient infrastructure for vulnerable communities. Her scholarship links scientific innovation with practical community needs, focusing on hurricane/earthquake engineering, coastal adaptation, and post-disaster recovery systems. She develops scalable solutions for civil infrastructure while addressing socioeconomic dimensions of resilience through homeowner behavior studies and policy engagement.

Analysis of her 2024-2025 publications reveals three dominant trends: (1) development of standardized frameworks for cross-hazard data collection (evident in PVRRs and FAST datasets), (2) integration of computer vision and AI for rapid damage assessment, and (3) behavioral studies of homeowner adaptation in coastal zones. These works increasingly emphasize collaborative networks like StEER to accelerate knowledge translation for policymakers.

Key recognitions include:

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

She leads major initiatives including Engineering2Empower and the NSF-funded StEER network, which coordinates over 70 engineers from two dozen organizations for post-disaster assessments. Her projects NJcoast and green resilience address critical gaps in coastal risk modeling and sustainable infrastructure. She has directed field missions following Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria, and Florence, plus the Haiti earthquake and Indonesia tsunami.

Kijewski-Correa co-founded Engineering2Empower and directs StEER's global reconnaissance operations. Her team developed the NJcoast geospatial platform and established standardized protocols for damage assessment across 20+ disasters. She conducts longitudinal recovery studies in Indonesia, Thailand, Haiti, and Caribbean nations, focusing on informal settlements and housing markets.