Luis Ceferino

Luis Ceferino is an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. Ceferino’s research group aims to extend the limits of what is feasible with catastrophe modeling and to collaborate synergistically with researchers within and outside civil engineering to advance the understanding of disaster risk in cities. His group combines rigorous structural modeling, uncertainty quantification, machine learning, and optimization to elucidate the impacts of extreme events, including earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods, on urban systems and to develop strategies for urban resilience.

Ceferino has led international teams of environmental, civil, and electrical engineers, as well as researchers in public health. He has also worked with the World Bank to study risks to housing, school, electricity, and hospital infrastructure from natural hazards in the United States, Nepal, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Peru. Ceferino has also conducted post-disaster reconnaissance after multiple disasters, including the 2016 Ecuador Earthquake, Hurricane Ian in 2022, and the 2023 Turkey-Syria Earthquake.

Ceferino is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award and the 2026 Hellman Fellows Award. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor in the Civil and Urban Engineering Department and the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University from 2021 to 2023. Before that, he was a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University.