People
Dr. Abigail L. Beck
Abigail (Abby) Beck is an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering and Environmental Engineering and Presidential Frontier Faculty (PFF) at University of Houston. She received a B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in and M.S. and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research surrounds the development of community impact-based infrastructure decision support by integrating her fundamental specialization in structural reliability, risk assessment, systems modeling, and probabilistic methods with social science approaches. She was a member of the NIST Center of Excellence for Community Resilience. She collaborates with engineers, economists, social scientists, and planners on the development of tools to support community resilience decision-making. She has been recognized for her research at multiple international conferences with a Student Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Structural Safety and Reliability (ICOSSAR) in 2022 and the Civil Engineering Risk and Reliability Association (CERRA) Student Recognition Award at the International Conference on Application of Statistics and Probability in Civil Engineering (ICASP) in 2023. She is a recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP) and 2023-2024 Mavis Future Faculty Fellowship at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Beck has also developed innovational game-based instructional tools for resilience instruction. She currently serves as co-faculty advisor to the University of Houston Engineers Without Borders student chapter. Through her career she plans to help usher engineering’s shift from a purely life-safety design mindset to one that is resilience and community impact oriented through both her teaching, research, and service.
Postdoctoral Scholars
Dr. Jangjae Lee
Dr. Jangjae Lee received his Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Texas A&M University in August 2025. His doctoral research was focused on leveraging machine learning to predict power outages as a result of extreme climate events in Texas. He is working with Dr. Abigail Beck in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Houston. The primary focus of his postdoctoral work is to examine the quality of US infrastructure and outage impact modeling through fieldwork and statistical modeling. In his spare time, Jangjae likes to exercise, go to cafes, and listen to nearly any genre of music, including country music and K-pop.
Students
Nafeezat Ajenifuja
Nafeezat Adetoro Ajenifuja is currently a PhD Student in Civil Engineering at the University of Houston. She earned her B.Sc. in Civil Engineering (Honors) from the University of Lagos, Nigeria in 2021 and her M.Sc. (Research) in Civil Engineering from the University of Houston in 2025.
She has gained hands-on experience in both public and private sectors, including at the Lagos State Ministry of Works, contributing to over 30 civil engineering projects within a span of 1.5 years. Her academic and professional work has focused on intelligent systems, risk analysis, and uncertainty quantification using data-driven and AI-based approaches. In 2024, she was part of the winning team at the NHERI Computational Academy Hackathon, where she contributed to innovative solutions for infrastructure resilience.
Her research interests include infrastructure resilience, community impact-based decision support, social impact modeling, and the integration of infrastructure and social systems in post-disaster recovery—building on her passion for applying AI and data-driven methods to real-world challenges. Outside of research, Nafeezat enjoys reading and exploring cuisines from different cultures.
Olubunmi Ogunleye
Olubunmi E. Ogunleye joined the BRG in 2025 and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering. He earned his B.Eng. (First Class Honors) in Civil Engineering from Osun State University, Nigeria (2019) and his M.Sc. in Digital Engineering from Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany (2025). With over four years of professional experience across the telecom, real estate, and construction industries, he has worked as a structural design engineer on diverse projects across Africa, the UK, and the EU. He also served as a research assistant at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, where he developed his interest in applying advanced computational tools to civil engineering challenges. Olubunmi has been recognized with several prestigious awards, including the PTDF Postgraduate Scholarship and the DAAD Postgraduate Scholarship. His research centers on infrastructure and community resilience, community impact-based engineering, and structural health monitoring using modern data-driven and AI-driven approaches. Beyond research, he is passionate about music and enjoys playing the drums and bass guitar.
Alumni