TEAM
Divya Chandrasekhar
Divya Chandrasekhar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of City & Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah with expertise in community recovery from disasters. Her research has examined post-disaster community participation and capacity building, networking and coordination among recovery institutions, and disaster recovery policy in Asia, the Carribean and the U.S. Divya specializes in qualitative inquiry and mixed method studies. Since 2015, she has been a member of the Utah State Hazard Mitigation Team, the Utah State Hazard Mitigation Plan Advisory Committee, and an affiliate of the Global Change and Sustainability Center at the University of Utah. Divya’s research has been funded by National Science Foundation, the Department of the Interior, and the Natural Hazards Center at Boulder. Her work has been published in prominent national and international journals in the fields of disaster management and urban planning.
Ivis Garcia Zambrana
Ivis García, AICP, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the City and Metropolitan Planning department at the University of Utah. Dr. Garcia also chairs Planners for Puerto Rico—a group of academic and practitioner planners from ACSP, APA, FEMA, CENTRO, UPR, and Society for Puerto Rican planners—among others that are collaborating in recovery efforts in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. She also involved with the National Puerto Rican Agenda, the Puerto Rican Agenda of Chicago, the Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition, and Centro’s IDEAComún all of which promote Puerto Rico’s recovery. Dr. García earned her PhD in urban planning and policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She holds dual Master’s degrees from the University of New Mexico in community and regional planning and Latin American Studies and a Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Sciences from Inter-American University in Puerto Rico.