Friday Fellow Feature: Ciara Horne

Our featured Fellow for October 2023 is Ciara Horne. Ciara is a Systems Engineering doctoral candidate at the University of Virginia (UVA). She received her B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Maryland where she specialized in structural engineering. In graduate school, she has leveraged her systems and structural engineering expertise to assess how our physical infrastructure systemically involves and perpetuates political, historical, and public health injustices. Specifically, her research consists of applying spatial analyses to discover and quantify the social impacts dam failures can have on racially and economically marginalized communities in the United States. For her research efforts, Ciara has received awards from notable organizations such as the National Science Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Association for Computing Machinery.

Ciara became a Bill Anderson Fund Fellow in Fall 2021 and has served on the Programming Committee for two years. During her tenure, she has helped organize virtual social events to keep BAF fellows connected and webinars that introduced fellows to mental health management practices and community engagement careers in the disaster field. She was also selected as a BAF plenary speaker and Public Communication of Science Fellow for the 2022 Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop. Her speech can be viewed here. 

In addition to her contributions to BAF, Ciara was the co-founder of the webinar series, Commune, at UVA’s Repair Lab where she funded and provided a platform for 30 minority researchers and community leaders to share their environmental justice work. She was also the co-president of Shades of Sisterhood at UVA, where she received university funding to plan social development events that provided emotional support and community for Black female graduate students.

Additionally, Ciara is a Health Policy Research Scholar, gaining professional development in public health policy that intersects with her career interests in data science, environmental justice, infrastructure resilience, and disaster mitigation. She is currently on the job market looking for opportunities regarding these interests! Connect with her on LinkedIn here.