Dr. Emrich is an Endowed Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Public Administration within the School of Public Administration and a founding member of the newly formed National Center for Integrated Coastal Research at University of Central Florida.  His research interests include the application of geospatial web-based technologies to emergency management planning and practice, long term recovery from disaster, and the intersection of social vulnerability and community resilience in the face of disaster.  From 2004 – 2007 he provided geospatial support for response and long term recovery to the state of Florida and has since been actively involved in identifying trends in long term recovery for coastal Mississippi and supervising FEMA’s public assistance web-transparency initiative for the gulf coast.  Dr. Emrich is a strong advocate of the transition of knowledge from academia and research into real-world applications.  He has been a key player in the development of theory, data, metrics, methods, applications, and spatial analytical models for understanding the newly emergent field of hazard vulnerability science and the often very different pattern of disaster recovery across communities.