N. Emel Ganapati

Bio

Dr. N. Emel Ganapati is an Associate Professor in Public Administration at Florida International University (FIU). She holds a master’s degree in planning from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. degree in planning from the School of Policy, Planning and Development, University of Southern California in Los Angeles. At FIU, Dr. Ganapati teaches courses on empirical methods, emergency management, policy analysis and public participation. Prior to joining FIU, she taught at the University of Miami and the University of Southern California.

Dr. Ganapati’s research interest includes disaster management, citizen participation/ community empowerment, and international development administration. Her principal focus is on post-disaster recovery, a topic that has received very little attention in the public administration discipline. Dr. Ganapati’s work has been published in top journals, including the Public Administration Review, Journal of the American Planning Association, Administration and Society, Disasters, Natural Hazards Review, Natural Hazards, the International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, the International Journal of Emergency Services, and Cooperation and Conflict.

Dr. Ganapati has received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for her research for the following projects: (1) Assessment of Cascading Failures and Collective Recovery of Interdependent Critical Infrastructure in Catastrophic Disasters: A Study of 2015 Earthquake in Nepal (Co-Principal Investigator, Ongoing, $49,962); (2) The Resilient Rural America: Drivers of Speedy and High Quality Recovery Following a Disaster (Principal Investigator, Completed, $359,854); and, (3) Re-Housing Urban Haiti after the Earthquake: The Role of Social Capital (Principal Investigator, Completed, $45,441). She also directed a study entitled Emotional Labor after the Haitian Earthquake: Haitian and International Disaster Relief and Early Recovery Workers in the Rubble funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (Completed, $175,926, Overall Principal Investigator: Mario de la Rosa). Furthermore, Dr. Ganapati serves as the Principal Investigator of Graduate Research Fellowships for stipend and educational expenses of two Ph.D. students: Nicki Fraser and Andrea Headley. These fellowships are funded by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Justice, respectively. Due to her achievements in research and scholarship, Dr. Ganapati received one of the 2012 university-wide Top Scholar Awards at FIU. Prior to this award, she received two awards for her doctoral dissertation: the 2006 Gill-Chin Lim Award for the Best Dissertation on International Planning (given by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning) and the 2006 Jack Dyckman Award for Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation in Planning given by her alma mater, University of Southern California. Furthermore, she was given a community award from the 10th Year Golcuk Earthquake Commemoration Committee due to her contributions to the recovery of Golcuk, the epicenter of the deadly 1999 earthquake in Turkey.

Dr. Ganapati has been active in reviewing funding proposals submitted to the NSF and the U.S. Department of Agriculture—both as an expert and panel reviewer. She also serves as an Executive Committee Member of the American Society for Public Administration’s (ASPA) Section for Emergency and Crisis Management (SECM) and a member of the Gill-Chin Lim Dissertation Award Committee of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning.