About Me
I am an incoming Assistant Professor at University of Illinois Chicago in the Department of Civil, Materials, and Environmental Engineering. My research focuses on how people use and benefit from transportation and other civil infrastructure systems during hazards, disruption, and institutional stress, and how those systems shape people’s safety, mobility, and post-disaster recovery.
I use mixed methods to study these questions, combining quantitative modeling approaches with qualitative and community-engaged research. My work spans topics including wildfire evacuation, flood recovery, transportation equity, electric vehicle charging, and emerging infrastructure systems. Across these areas, I am interested in how people experience infrastructure under stress and how planning, governance, and engineering decisions shape safety, reliability, and post-disaster recovery.
I serve as Associate Editor for Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives and as a Fellow in the National Science Foundation’s Enabling the Next Generation of Hazards Researchers Program. Previously I was an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Utah State University.
I am open to collaborations with colleagues in all disciplines; please send an email I’d love to chat.
Email: sgrajdu2@uic.edu
Updated July 2026