Lead Principal Investigator for the Department of Homeland Security’s Coastal Resilience Center of Excellence
Director, UNC Center for Natural Hazards Resilience
Alumni Distinguished Professor of Marine Sciences and Environmental Sciences and Engineering
Director, UNC Institute of Marine Sciences
Dr. Rick Luettich’s research addresses modeling and observational studies of circulation and transport in complex coastal systems. He is a principal developer of the ADCIRC circulation and storm surge model that is widely used by the academic, government and private sectors for coastal flood hazard assessments, mitigation design, event-based forensics and forecasting. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and led over $50 million dollars in extramurally funded research.
He is actively engaged in the coastal science and coastal resilience communities, serving as the lead PI of the Department of Homeland Security’s Coastal Resilience Center of Excellence since 2008; the lead PI of the NOAA Coastal and Ocean Modeling Testbed from 2010-2018; a member of three recent National Academies study committees on coastal issues (chairing the 2013-14 committee on Coastal Risk Reduction); a member of the Water Institute of the Gulf’s Science and Engineering Advisory Council; and a member of the Board of Commissioners of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East from 2012-2019.
Dr. Luettich has an undergraduate and master’s degree in civil engineering from Georgia Tech and a doctor of science in civil engineering from MIT.