Amy Javernick-Will News

LA fire rebuilding recommendations for homeowners

Susan Glairon — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 21:03:47 +0000

LA fire rebuilding recommendations for homeowners Susan Glairon Tue, 04/01/2025 - 15:03

Researchers from the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering share key lessons from post-Marshall Fire rebuilding to help Los Angeles homeowners and others navigate recovery after wildfires.

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Professor receives ASCE Peurifoy Construction Research Award

Susan Glairon — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 21:12:46 +0000

Professor receives ASCE Peurifoy Construction Research Award Susan Glairon Wed, 03/26/2025 - 15:12

Susan Glairon

Professor Amy Javernick-Will received the 2025 Peurifoy Construction Research Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers, the highest ASCE academic honor in construction engineering and management. The award recognizes outstanding contributions to construction engineering through research and technological advancements.

“This award is incredibly meaningful for me," Javernick-Will said. "I am incredibly fortunate to have received amazing mentorship throughout my career, many of whom have received the Peurifoy award, including my advisor. The award is a testament to my graduate students and research group, who have spent countless hours on research focused on improving lives thorough safe shelter and buildings, reliable and safe water and infrastructure services."

Javernick-Will’s impact on the field has been widely recognized. She also recently received the 2024 Pathfinder Award, the highest honor from the Engineering Project Organization Society, at its annual conference in Bar Harbor, Maine.

At ��ϳԹ�, Javernick-Will leads the Global Projects and Organizations Research Group, which integrates social sciences and engineering to address complex problems and achieve beneficial community outcomes.

Her contributions have drawn praise from colleagues, including Professor Keith Molenaar, who highlighted her influence on LinkedIn. “The Peurifoy award highlights Amy’s groundbreaking work at the intersection of social and built systems—advancing community resilience, post-disaster recovery and the sustainable delivery of infrastructure services for all, especially marginalized communities,” wrote Molenaar, dean of ��ϳԹ�’s College of Engineering and Applied Science and a 2021 Peurifoy Award recipient. “Amy’s work is a great example of how engineering isn’t just about what we build—it’s about who we build it for. Her research is defining the future of construction and infrastructure, making sure that the systems we create are more sustainable, resilient and equitable.”

Javernick-Will earned her PhD in civil engineering, construction engineering and management from Stanford University and both her MS and BS in civil engineering from ��ϳԹ�.

"This work would not be possible without the community partners, whose wisdom, passion and collaboration have enabled collection action to improve the built environment," Javernick-Will said.

Professor Amy Javernick-Will received the highest academic honor in construction engineering and management from the American Society of Civil Engineers.

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Amy Javernick-Will: Q&A with CEAS's new associate dean for faculty advancement

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 16:03:36 +0000

Amy Javernick-Will: Q&A with CEAS's new associate dean for faculty advancement Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/13/2024 - 10:03

In this Q&A, Amy Javernick-Will, the new associate dean for faculty advancement, discusses the meaningful ways she has felt welcomed into the College of Engineering leadership.

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��ϳԹ� professor honored with Pathfinder award for societal impact

Anonymous — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 16:16:59 +0000

��ϳԹ� professor honored with Pathfinder award for societal impact Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/26/2024 - 10:16

Susan Glairon

Professor Amy Javernick-Will received the Pathfinder award, the highest honor of the Engineering Project Organization Society, at the 2024 Engineering Project Organization Conference held June 11-14 in Bar Harbor, Maine.

The award recognizes significant contributions with lasting impact. Javernick-Will's research aims to improve how communities, especially those lacking resources, can better handle disasters and sustain their infrastructure, such as housing, water and sanitation.

“The award was a wonderful surprise,” said Javernick-Will of ��ϳԹ�’s Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering. “Seeing my expanding academic family in the audience, I was overcome with emotion both for the support I received to pursue an unconventional research path focused on societal impact, and the tremendous work that my students and their students are doing to ensure positive infrastructure outcomes.”

Positive infrastructure outcomes can include infrastructures that are resilient to natural disasters, minimize environmental impact and are beneficial to all segments of society, including marginalized communities.

Adding to her emotion, Javernick-Will's academic advisor, Emeritus Professor Raymond Levitt, a civil and environmental engineering professor from Stanford University, was among the first recipients of the Pathfinder awards, and her co-advisor, Emeritus Professor W. Richard Scott, a sociology professor, also from Stanford, received the award concurrently with her.

At ��ϳԹ�, Javernick-Will leads the Global Projects and Organizations Research Group, which is composed of boundary spanners—individuals who work across different disciplines, integrating social sciences and engineering–to address complex problems and achieve beneficial community outcomes.

The Engineering Project Organization Society originally focused on studying how engineering projects are organized, managed and executed but has broadened its scope to include understanding and improving the effects of engineering projects on communities and society. This includes ensuring that infrastructure development is equitable, benefitting all segments of the population fairly, including underserved or marginalized groups.

“This award is a tribute to my academic family—my former PhD students and their students—who are members of the society and are making remarkable contributions worldwide to ensure safe infrastructure services for all,” Javernick-Will added.

Professor Amy Javernick-Will received the Pathfinder Award, the highest honor from the Engineering Project Organization Society, recognizing her research on improving disaster response and infrastructure sustainability in resource-limited communities.

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New seed grants from the Engineering Education and AI-Augmented Learning research theme will support range of topics

Anonymous — Thu, 25 May 2023 16:22:41 +0000

New seed grants from the Engineering Education and AI-Augmented Learning research theme will support range of topics Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 05/25/2023 - 10:22

CEAE Professors Angela R. Bielefeldt and Amy Javernick-Will recently received seed grants for individual projects through the Engineering Education and AI-Augmented Learning Interdisciplinary Research Theme. The award is given to help spur research teaming in the college and boost early projects with the high potential for societal impact.

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Studying the Marshall Fire recovery to help communities rebuild

Anonymous — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 17:24:06 +0000

Studying the Marshall Fire recovery to help communities rebuild Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 09/16/2022 - 11:24

Jeff Zehnder

Related News

Webinar: Building Capacity for Safe, Disaster-Resilient Housing - Sept. 20

Tuesday, Sept. 20 | 12:00 p.m. | Zoom - Register Now

Safe, disaster-resilient housing is critical to our way of life, prosperity, and sense of security. Yet, many houses remain vulnerable to damage from earthquakes, hurricanes, and other hazards, affecting communities in the near and long term.

In this webinar, Professors Amy Javernick-Will and Abbie Liel will describe findings from research that their team conducted to enhance housing safety in the multi-hazard context of Puerto Rico.

Considering that a large portion of housing stock is built informally, where building codes and regulations may not be followed, they argue that how builders and residents perceive housing safety influences how housing is designed, built, and maintained.

Focusing on one misalignment, the installation of hurricane straps, they will discuss their initial efforts to build capacity in the region by partnering with a community-based organization.

Find out more and register to attend

The Marshall fire screamed across the prairie, exploding into homes with 80 mph winds and destroying entire neighborhoods. It caused over a billion dollars in damage in less than a day and took everything from more than 1,000 homeowners in Superior and Louisville, Colorado, leaving behind little more than ash and concrete foundations.

Nine months have passed since the disaster, and as families work to rebuild, an interdisciplinary team of ��ϳԹ� researchers has received a major National Science Foundation grant to study long-term community impacts to help improve outcomes from future disasters.

“In this project, we’re really interested in how jurisdictions and homeowners are rebuilding, particularly in light of future risks,” said Amy Javernick-Will, a professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering and lead investigator on the grant. “There have been other fires in California and Oregon, but the scale of this destruction was pretty dramatic.”

As disasters increase, destroying homes and infrastructure, families and governments have to make decisions on how to rebuild. Those decisions include adoption and enforcement of building codes that can have a long-term influence on community outcomes in resiliency and environmental sustainability. Those codes, however, come with a tradeoff, including potential increased costs and time to rebuild.

It is an obstacle facing one member of the research team first-hand. Matthew Koschmann, an associate professor of communications, owns a rental property in Superior that was destroyed by the fire.

“Do I want to incorporate this new ordinance or opt out? I’m part of these conversations on Slack channels online. Some people are saying we should upgrade our houses to be more fire resilient, that it will help protect the entire neighborhood, but others are saying the added cost to their rebuild is insurmountable,” Koschmann said.

The research is particularly focused on the social aspect of rebuilding: how communities are connecting, influencing each other, and making major decisions about moving forward. A goal of the grant is to provide guidance on the decisions and uncertainties homeowners and governments face during the rebuilding process and identifying the processes and codes that meet collective goals after a disaster.

“In fires, what your neighbors do affects your property,” Javernick-Will said. “This shared action is really important, and we want to uncover this process. Most studies look at just the immediate response, the first couple of weeks. There are far fewer long-term studies.”

Much of the work will be conducted through personal interviews with homeowners, as well as builders, insurance companies, and municipal government officials. Noah Gershon, a civil engineering PhD student, is leading this part of the effort.

“There is a complicated interplay between the different groups,” Gershon said. “We want to study each to see how we can make things better. There’s a perception that after a disaster, everything is taken care of and funding is available for everyone. It’s just not true. Homeowners have to figure out a lot themselves. We want to improve that process.”

A goal of the work is to bridge the gap between engineering and human social interaction to understand the real-world impacts of decision making after disasters.

“There are complex social interactions here. It isn’t just technical scientific stuff. It’s both,” Koschmann said. “There’s a level of stress and tension that’s part of it and dealing with different insurance policies, neighbors, building codes. This isn’t abstract. It has real personal impact.”

In addition to Javernick-Will, Koschmann, and Gershon, the research team also includes Abbie Liel, a professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering, and Megan Ellery, a civil engineering PhD student.

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Webinar: Building Capacity for Safe, Disaster-Resilient Housing - Sept. 20

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 20:42:52 +0000

Webinar: Building Capacity for Safe, Disaster-Resilient Housing - Sept. 20 Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/14/2022 - 14:42

Tuesday, Sept. 20 | 12:00 p.m. | Zoom - Register Now

In this webinar, Professors Amy Javernick-Will and Abbie Liel will describe findings from research that their team conducted to enhance housing safety in the multi-hazard context of Puerto Rico.

Focusing on one misalignment, the installation of hurricane straps, they will discuss their initial efforts to build capacity in the region by partnering with a community-based organization.

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Sustainable WASH Systems learning partnership publishes end-of-project report

Anonymous — Fri, 03 Jun 2022 16:01:10 +0000

Sustainable WASH Systems learning partnership publishes end-of-project report Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 06/03/2022 - 10:01

The Sustainable WASH Systems Learning Partnership led by ��ϳԹ� has published an end-of-cycle report detailing work completed through the $15 million project with U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Over the last five years, the learning partnership coordinated the efforts of seven organizations in sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia seeking to develop, test and document sustainable approaches to local water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) to support initial infrastructure investments.

Professor Amy Javernick-Will
Co-principal investigator for the WASH project

The project was unique in that it partnered with local organizations to implement and compare activities across multiple countries and contexts — offering a more holistic picture of what works and what doesn’t from a systems level. The final report summarizes the work and shows how a systems-level understanding and engagement approach can help providers navigate challenges to service sustainability. It also shows how incentivizing preventive maintenance and fast repair times can improve rural water services and describes how collective action platforms can bring about policy change.

The Sustainable WASH Systems Learning Partnership was organized and managed through the Mortenson Center in Global Engineering beginning in 2016. Professors Amy Javernick-Will and Karl Linden, both associate directors of the Mortenson Center in Global Engineering and co-principal investigators for the project, said this final report serves as a cap to an incredibly productive and valuable research project.

Javernick-Will said sustainable services remain a daunting challenge in the WASH sector because governments, service providers and development organizations have traditionally focused on access and service expansion in WASH systems with less emphasis on sustaining existing services and infrastructure. She pointed to failed water hand pumps in Africa, which represent a total lost investment of between $1.2 and $1.5 billion over the last 20 years, as one example. The fact that more than half of all subsidized toilets are unused, misused or abandoned is another example.

“Gaps in service coverage remain significant and — meanwhile — implementation challenges are growing,” she said. “Our approach and findings summarized in this report show that the best way to strengthen these crucial local systems is to instead meaningfully engage with stakeholders on the ground to collectively identify priorities and address common barriers like financing while also consistently reviewing, measuring and adapting the systems toward overall sustainability.”

In all, the partnership has generated over 200 unique papers, materials and presentations over its life cycle, with five PhD, and two master’s students, along with five undergraduate students, working on aspects of the project at ��ϳԹ� alone. A few highlights noted in the report, which were achieved in collaboration with partners, include:

Data on water pump functionality is now available for the first time to government maintenance service providers in Afar, Ethiopia.
A comprehensive sanitation assessment spurred stakeholders to form a learning alliance and convince decision-makers to prioritize sanitation with other development activities in Debre Birhan, Ethiopia.
The project conducted 64 analyses to improve stakeholder understanding of WASH systems, showcasing shifting prioritization toward maintenance.
The development of master plans to coordinate investments and align efforts for domestic and institutional WASH services in five districts in Uganda and Ethiopia.
Approximately 500 people from over 40 countries attended the online close-out with presentations on shared findings.

Students, faculty and staff affiliated with the Mortenson Center in Global Engineering working on this project and related issues in Africa, Asia and beyond.

Strengthening interconnected systems

Javernick-Will said the project began with a theory of change that focused on understanding and strengthening local systems to better sustain WASH services. This theory recognized that sustaining outcomes depends on the contributions of multiple, interconnected actors from different areas and with different expertise or skills. With that in mind, the team at ��ϳԹ� started their research with the premise that strengthening a local system means directly engaging with the people within it to understand the system and collectively identify needs and priorities.

The team eventually focused on four priorities to accomplish that goal: stakeholder understanding, network analysis, professionalized service models and collective action. Together, they resulted in work to identify collaboration gaps — such as disconnects between district-level stakeholders and user communities — and ways to professionalize maintenance models that proactively service, repair and replace hardware to deliver more reliable, guaranteed service. The full list of projects, approaches and activities for each priority is available online and will aid many future interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research projects in the field.

Linden said the Mortenson Center was well positioned to lead this type of large-scale research for a variety of reasons.

“The depth of research expertise on our team in these subjects — coupled with long-standing connections to the international organizations that work on these problems every day — is a powerful combination to develop lasting solutions and approaches,” he said. “This type of large-scale, ongoing research contributes to the overall body of knowledge in crucial global engineering areas like network analysis, professionalized service models and collective action. And we fully expect to keep working in these areas for years to come.”

Partners on the project included IRC WASH, Whave, Tetra Tech, Linc, Environmental Incentives, WaterSHED, and the University of Oxford. The project’s website contains links to over 200 knowledge products and presentations, and an annotated bibliography of resources.

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Amy Javernick-Will News

LA fire rebuilding recommendations for homeowners

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Professor receives ASCE Peurifoy Construction Research Award

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Amy Javernick-Will: Q&A with CEAS's new associate dean for faculty advancement

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���ϳԹ� professor honored with Pathfinder award for societal impact

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New seed grants from the Engineering Education and AI-Augmented Learning research theme will support range of topics

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Studying the Marshall Fire recovery to help communities rebuild

Related News

Webinar: Building Capacity for Safe, Disaster-Resilient Housing - Sept. 20

Off

Webinar: Building Capacity for Safe, Disaster-Resilient Housing - Sept. 20

Off

Sustainable WASH Systems learning partnership publishes end-of-project report

Strengthening interconnected systems

Off

��ϳԹ� professor honored with Pathfinder award for societal impact