Our Featured Fellow for November 2022 is Valerie Washington, a doctoral candidate in Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan. 

Valerie joined the Bill Anderson Fund as a fellow in 2018. Since then, she has been a member of the Programming Committee, the Lightning Talks Planning Committee, as well as the Collaborative Communities Initiative Working Group. She has twice presented in the BAF’s annual Lightning Talks Session at the Natural Hazards Workshop, including during the Public Communication of Science Lightning Talks Plenary Session at the 2022 Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop. 

Valerie’s research focuses on the influence of natural hazards on human behavior. Her dissertation research covers three topic areas. First, she uses mobile phone location data to infer departure times during Hurricanes Matthew and Irma and the locations from which they took place. She examines the factors that may contribute to the observed departure trends through the use of statistical and machine learning models. Secondly, she uses predictive modeling to project travel times during hurricane evacuations using historical travel time trends during four hurricanes. Lastly, she evaluates the impact that the availability of income-based flood insurance subsidies has on communities through the use of agent-based models.  

In addition to the Bill Anderson Fund Fellowship, Valerie has received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and the University of Michigan’s Rackham Merit Fellowship. Valerie received an MSE in Industrial and Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan. She graduated with a BS in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Kennesaw State University, with minors in Mathematics, Quality Principles, and Spanish. During this time, she was awarded the 2016 Engineering Student of the Year Award for the state of Georgia by the Georgia Society of Professional Engineers.

Valerie is currently the Young Professionals Representative for the Justice, Equity, and Risk Specialty Group of the Society for Risk Analysis. She has previously held positions on the University of Michigan’s Michigan University-Wide Sustainability & Environment Conference Committee, including Finance Chair and Venue Logistics Lead. As a graduate student at the University of Michigan, Valerie has mentored undergraduate researchers, participated in mentoring programs designed to help undergraduate students learn more about graduate school, and has been a peer-mentor to other graduate students through the Society of Women Engineers.

Valerie is on the job market! To learn more about her research, visit her website or connect with her on LinkedIn.

RESEARCH INTERESTS:

Applications: evacuations, departure time estimates, travel times, flood insurance, mitigation, mobility data

Methods: operations research, predictive models, statistical models, agent-based models, surveys, interviews