David J. Yu

davidyu@purdue.edu

I am an associate professor (effective fall 2023) at Purdue University, with joint appointments in the Lyles School of Civil Engineering (75%, tenure home) and the Department of Political Science (25%). I am also part of Purdue’s Building Sustainable Communities cluster which conducts interdisciplinary research on sustainability and community resilience. You might find it interesting that I am part of two very different departments (civil engineering and political science). This unique position of mine stems from the fact that I am trained in sustainability science, and that my research focuses on the interdisciplinary science of complex coupled  systems  (e.g., engineered-social, socio-hydrological, social-ecological, etc.).

To tell you more about myself, my research centers on the resilience of coupled systems to change and uncertainty. I study how natural, physical, and institutional factors interact to shape the dynamics of such coupled systems. I examine these interactions to understand the conditions for building resilient communities from local to global scales in the face of global change. I apply diverse knowledge sets together to engage in this research: systems thinking and modeling, design of human-made infrastructure and technology, human collective action problems, and behavior of humans, among others. I use multiple methods such as mathematical and computational modeling, case study analysis, and behavioral experiments.

Please write me a note if you’re interested in this kind of research. I will be interested to know more about your interests. I am also on look out for motivated graduate students to join Purdue university and work with me. Relevant programs at Purdue would be Civil Engineering, Ecological Sciences and Engineering, Environmental and Ecological Engineering, Forestry and Natural Resources, and Political Science.