NEWS
-
New Resilient Futures Podcast: Making Sense of SETS
This month, Alysha Helmrich is our host and guest! This short episode discusses social-ecological-technological systems and sensemaking. She explores urban systems as SETS, positions SETS thinking for sensemaking, and identifies four modes of SETS to build requisite variety. To learn more, follow the links below! Links:Foundational reading on SETSMain perspective…
-
IRIS Graduate Ada Chimsulukeme awarded WEDA Fellowship
Congratulations to one of our most recent grads, Ada Agbogu Chimzulukeme on being awarded a Western Dredging Association Fellowship! WEDA Fellows work to assist WEDA members and commissions in their goal of being the center of dredging excellence. Ada graduated with a master’s in Civil and Environmental Engineering with emphasis in…
-
UGA Researchers engineer safer road crossings for wildlife and people
Why did the turtle cross the road? Hint: it wasn’t just to get to the other side. John Maerz, Dennis and Sarah Carey Distinguished Professor of Forestry and Natural Resources and a Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, can tell you exactly why turtles…
-
Charting the path to a greener world: Past, present, and future for Nature-based design standards
In a new publication from ASCE Open, the multidisciplinary journal of the American Society of Civil Engineers, a team of experts from across academic, government, industry and nonprofit organizations are calling for a better future for natural infrastructure. Nature-Based Design Standards: Past, Present, and Future argues that the challenge isn’t…
-
UGA teams up with Georgia Tech to restore state’s coastlines
Three University of Georgia research faculty are working with a team from Georgia Tech on a coastline restoration project that is supported by nearly $1 million from the National Coastal Resilience Fund, operated by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF). This marks the second NFWF grant awarded to the…
-
Studying the storm-stopping strength of mangroves
As Marco Garcia enters the third year of his PhD at UGA, he’s investigating how red mangrove trees protect coastal communities from hurricanes by putting their strength to the test. Mangrove trees are found along coastlines and wetlands in tropical and subtropical regions around the world. They grow in both…
-
UGA’s Karahanna and Shepherd named Regents’ Professors
The professorship honors exemplary faculty with renowned scholarship, creative activity. University of Georgia faculty members Elena Karahanna and J. Marshall Shepherd have earned the distinction of Regents’ Professors, the University System of Georgia’s highest professorial honor.
-
New Resilient Futures Podcast: The Future of ASCE
In the face of immense global and national change, the world’s oldest engineering society is staying flexible. The American Society for Civil Engineers President, Marsha Bomar, joins our host Alysha Helmrich to speak to the power of diverse perspectives in building the future’s infrastructure and the need for interdisciplinary teams…
-
Congratulations to IRIS affiliate Seth Wenger, on Athletic Association Professorship
We’d like to extend a hearty congratulations to Dr. Seth Wenger, Director of Science for the River Basin Center and a longtime Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems affiliate, for his recent appointment to an Athletic Association Professorship. Endowed seats, such as Wenger’s Athletic Association Professorship, play an important role in…
-
The science behind mining the South’s biggest swamp
At 438,000 acres, the Okefenokee Swamp is one of the largest intact wetlands left on Earth. It’s also–once again–the subject of heated debate over the potential impacts of nearby mining. Over a 30-year saga, multiple plans to mine titanium dioxide (the material that helps brighten the whites of Oreo filling,…
-
Van Rees illuminates path toward a more biodiverse future
Polls show the public widely supports protecting biodiversity, but how we get there—or even what a biodiverse future looks like—isn’t as clear. A new paper led by Odum School of Ecology assistant professor Charles van Rees is helping to chart a path to restoring and saving biodiversity, much like how…
-
IRIS Year in Review: 25 Papers for 2025
2025 has been an eventful year for IRIS! As part of our annual, end-of-year tradition we’ve collected 25 papers from across 2025 (ordered by publication month) that showcase our unique interdisciplinary focus. The Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems was chartered by the University of Georgia in late 2016. If you’d…
