Anoushka Dhillon, third year UCL Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering undergraduate student, presented the results of her undergraduate thesis (supervised by Gemma) in a presentation titled: "Ports at Risk: Rethinking Tsunami Alert Thresholds in Japan" at the 17th Aceh International Workshop and Expo on Sustainable Disaster Recovery (AIWEST-DR) 2025 Conference in London on 22nd August. 

Anoushka's study demonstrated how a risk-informed tsunami alert threshold could be developed for the Sendai Port Japan, making use of a series of synthetic tsunami scenarios developed at the International Research Institute of Disaster Science, Tohoku University . This was extremely impressive work for an undergraduate student and we congratulate Anoushka on her well-deserved receipt of a departmental "Third Year Project Prize" for achieving one of the highest thesis marks in her cohort. 

Well done, Anoushka!

The CRG was well represented at the Communicating Research to Non-Specialist Audiences workshop, with four of our members among the thirteen selected participants. The full-day workshop, held at UCL Bloomsbury Campus on 21 July 2025, was facilitated by Scriptoria and funded through the BEAMS Positive Futures Initiative.

The training focused on developing practical communication skills to engage non-specialist audiences through clear messaging, strategic use of visuals, and effective storytelling. Participants gained experience in adapting complex research content for broader impact across newsletters, social media, and other channels.

The CRG proudly congratulates Roman on the successful defence of his doctoral thesis at RWTH Aachen University, earning the title Dr.-Ing. His defence took place at the historic Charlemagne the Great fountain in front of the Rathaus in central Aachen—a cherished local tradition for marking academic milestones.

Roman’s PhD, conducted from late 2020 to the end of 2023 at Hochschule Magdeburg-Stendal, resulted in four impactful publications. His research, titled "Critical infrastructure networks in flood risk management” explored:

• The integration of flood risk analysis methods tailored to networked systems

• Challenges surrounding data availability

• Network-specific mitigation measures to enhance resilience

Congrats, Dr. Schotten!

The UCL Minority Report team (including Gemma, Roman and Prof. Carmine Galasso of the DE|RISC lab) leads the project's second work package, which centres on the development of risk and resilience modelling tools grounded in the actual experiences of communities affected by disasters. 

A key part of this work involves conducting a series of engagement workshops with local residents and experts in the project's testbeds, to better understand the challenges people face in disasters and to learn directly from their lived experiences. Roman led these community workshops in Patras, Greece, in collaboration with project members from the Prospex Institute and the University of Patras. While there, he also represented the UCL team at the project's general assembly. 

Of course, no project field work is complete without a bit of goofing around - especially when Roman is involved!

• April: Gemma gave an invited talk at the Seismological Society of America Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, entitled: "Exploring long- and short-term time dependencies in earthquake risk modeling" (co-authors: Salvatore Iacoletti and Carmine Galasso)

• April: Gemma gave an invited "highlight" talk at the European Geophysical Union General Assembly in Vienna, Austria, entitled: "Creating and implementing a decision support environment for risk-sensitive, pro-poor urban planning and development of Tomorrow's Cities" (co-authors: Thaisa Comelli, Carmine Galasso, Roberto Gentile, Ramesh Guragain, Max Hope, Vibek Manandhar, Emin Mentese, Mark Pelling, and Hugh Sinclair). She also presented a poster entitled: "Learning important risk mitigation lessons through counterfactual analysis of the 2023 Lahaina Wildfires" (co-author: Haseeb Ahmed)

• July: Gemma participated in a panel discussion on "Climate Change and Disaster-related Statistics", as part of the Environmental and Ecological Statistics Conference at Lancaster University UK

Many congrats to CRG PhD student Cristina Cordova Arias, who was recently honoured as one of the 2024 Professional New Faces of Civil Engineering at the OPAL Awards Gala in San Diego, USA, organised by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)! Cristina is pictured here with Marsia Geldert-Murphey, the 2024 ASCE President. You can read more about this achievement here.