I’m an Assistant Professor at the Department of Geography and Environmental Planning at Towson University. My research interests are environmental hazards and social inequalities. Specifically, I focus on housing resilience of socially vulnerable communities towards disasters.

I worked at the ISU GIS facility on a project for Iowa DNR. I digitized features of watersheds through the state of Iowa as well as updated historical conservation features of those watersheds.

I assisted Dr. Sara Hamideh with her class entitled " Environmental Planning." This course is a core class for undergraduate sophomores of Community and Regional Planning (CRP-293). This course introduces to students the field of environmental planning in the United States. Environmental planning has various scales, topics, and techniques. Three major focus areas of environmental planning that we cover in this course include the impact of environment (natural and built) on public health, preserving natural assets, and managing the risks from natural hazards.

I assisted my advisor (Dr. Sara Hamideh) in researching disaster recovery and social vulnerabilities mitigation. We investigated making resilient communities, public participation, and recovery of the communities that hit by natural disasters and helping socially vulnerable people including residents of public housing to be more resilient towards natural disasters. I completed literature reviews for these research, and in some cases, I did the survey as well as collecting data through field studies. For example, I finished the housing recovery survey after the flooding caused by the Hurricane Matthew, 2016 in Lumberton, North Carolina in January 2018. I surveyed as a member of the research team of the Center of Excellence for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning that is funded by NIST.

I taught various undergraduate courses in design skills and theory of architecture such as: Computer Application in ArchitectureLight DesignArchitectural PracticesArchitectural Design StudioContemporary Architecture Introduction to World ArchitectureHuman, Nature and Architecture

I was a researcher in the Department of Reconstruction and Rural Housing. I researched the Post-disaster reconstruction of rural area and the towns in Iran. I did field studies and conducting interviews in order to document and report the reconstructions. I participated in the documentation of the process of Bam reconstruction after the earthquake of 2003. I collected the data about the process and documented them that was published as a book.

I was assisting the design team of the firm in designing residential units. I was working with Auto CAD software to prepare the maps and Sketched the designed plans. I also worked with the team in designing the commercial and recreational complexes.