Mary Fran Myers Scholarship Winners
The Mary Fran Myers Scholarship recognizes outstanding individuals who share Myers' commitment to disaster research and practice and have the potential to make a lasting contribution to reducing disaster vulnerability.
This year's winners are:
Alex Altshuler
Ali Ardalan
Oluponmile Olonilua
Alex Altshuler
Alex Altshuler holds master’s degree in community social work from the University of Haifa and in social sciences and humanitarian affairs from the University of Rome. His bachelor’s is in behavioral sciences from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel.
His master’s thesis was a first-of-its-kind empirical study of factors influencing local Israeli authorities' emergency preparedness for war-caused disaster. He plans to begin PhD studies about Israel's lack of earthquake preparedness soon.
He works as a regional project coordinator at the Israel Crisis Management Center, a nongovernmental organization assisting new immigrants faced with crisis or tragedy. Before that, he did community work with various populations, and was active in social entrepreneurship, enhancing emergency preparedness and response cooperation, and tutoring. His research has focused on various aspects of emergency preparedness and mitigation, intersector cooperation, trauma and immigration, and the development of new approaches for understanding complex emergencies. He is a true believer in the strength and kindness of human spirit.
Ali Ardalan
Dr. Ali Ardalan is an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Tehran University of Medical Sciences' Institute of Public Health Research and is founder of Iran’s first academic Health in Emergencies and Disasters department. He is also director of the Master of Public Health (MPH) program with a disaster concentration. His research interests focus on disaster epidemiology, community-based disaster risk management, and vulnerable groups in disasters.
He worked with the World Health Organization after the Bam earthquake and was a guest researcher at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden. In 2009, he received the National Health Friend Award. His community-based research initiative on early warning of flash floods was named among the top projects in the National Development and Creativity Festival.
Dr. Ardalan is a contributor to the 2009 UN Global Assessment Report on Iran’s natural hazard analysis. Collaborating with the United Nations’ International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, WHO, and Iran’s health system, he initiated Hospitals Safe from Disasters campaign at the country level. He directs global education on natural disaster management through Supercourse, based at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. Networking and building just-in-time lectures on the earthquakes in Bam, Pakistan, Indonesia, and China, the South Asian Tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina helped accomplished this collaboration.
Working with a multinational team with different ethnic and religious backgrounds has taught him how to build an environment of trust and friendship within a network of public health scholars and professionals worldwide.
Oluponmile Olonilua
Oluponmile Olonilua is a visiting assistant professor of public administration at Texas Southern University's Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs in Houston. She became involved in disaster research after personally experiencing Tropical Storm Allison in 2001.
Her research interests include hazard mitigation plan evaluation and the effect of disasters on minorities and special populations. She has researched Tropical Storm Allison and evacuation problems during hurricane Katrina of 2005. Her dissertation, Towards Multihazard Mitigation: An Evaluation of FEMA-Approved Hazard Mitigation Plans under the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 (DMA2K), evaluated over 200 plans approved under DMA2K.
She is now working on implementation research as a follow-up to that evaluation and looking at the effect of state mandates on the DMA2K plans. She will begin a tenure track position as an assistant professor of public administration at TSU in the fall of 2008. She plans to teach emergency management.