U.S. DOE awards CCNY expert Naresh Devineni $2M for RENEW project

Naresh Devineni, professor of civil engineering at The City College of New York and a water systems and hydroclimate expert, is the recipient of a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a holistic research and training program for its RENEW (Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce) initiative. The outcome will be to prepare a workforce that can respond to extreme natural hazards.

From CCNY’s Grove School of Engineering, Devineni will lead the three-year project. Other faculty from CCNY include Te Pei and Hansong Tang from Civil Engineering, Shakila Merchant from CUNY CREST Institute, Prathap Ramamurthy from Mechanical Engineering, and James Booth from the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Faculty from Stony Brook University and scientists from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory are partners. This multidisciplinary group comprises researchers, civil, environmental, and electrical engineers; climate, atmospheric, and ecosystem science experts, as well as specialists in data science, education and workforce training. 

The team’s goal is a research and training program that will provide CCNY students and early career scientists with opportunities to gain in-depth experience in understanding extreme natural hazards and solving the associated and expanding societal challenges caused by these events.

“The project aims to improve the knowledge of extreme natural hazards by quantifying and understanding the properties of floods, landslides, heatwaves, and multi-hazard impacts in the Greater New York metropolitan area,” said Devineni, noting that it’s one of the densest urban regions in the country and home to nearly 25 million people.

“A synergistic approach that blends Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning with traditional computational methods will be used to create more robust, scalable, and dynamic climate-informed natural hazard risk management tools for the next generation of energy science workforce,” Devineni added.

The project aims to prepare well-trained graduates and postdoctoral scientists who will become part of the next generation in government, industry, and academia. The trainees will gain the skillsets necessary to immediately contribute to ongoing resilience and adaptation projects in a cost and schedule-driven environment and an increasingly AI-driven workplace. 

About The City College of New York
Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided a high-quality and affordable education to generations of New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. CCNY embraces its position at the forefront of social change. It is ranked #1 by the Harvard-based Opportunity Insights out of 369 selective public colleges in the United States on the overall mobility index. This measure reflects both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at CCNY can move up two or more income quintiles. Education research organization Degree Choices ranks CCNY #1 nationally among universities for economic return on investment. In addition, the Center for World University Rankings places CCNY in the top 1.8% of universities worldwide in terms of academic excellence. Labor analytics firm Lightcast puts at $3.2 billion CCNY’s annual economic impact on the regional economy (5 boroughs and 5 adjacent counties) and quantifies the “for dollar” return on investment to students, taxpayers and society. At City College, more than 15,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in eight schools and divisions, driven by significant funded research, creativity and scholarship. In 2023, CCNY launched its most expansive fundraising campaign, ever. The campaign, titled “Doing Remarkable Things Together” seeks to bring the College’s Foundation to more than $1 billion in total assets in support of the College mission. CCNY is as diverse, dynamic and visionary as New York City itself. View CCNY Media Kit.

Jay Mwamba
p: 917.892.0374
e: jmwamba@ccny.cuny.edu