Arkaprabha "Arka" Bhattacharyya earned his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in 2016 from Jadavpur University, India. He has continued his civil engineering studies at Purdue University, receiving his master’s degree in 2020 and now pursuing his PhD. In addition, he earned a graduate certificate from the Purdue Systems Collaboratory in 2022. His research is focused on making communities and infrastructure resilient to natural hazards such as floods and hurricanes. For his dissertation, he is developing a big data-driven decision-making model that can be used for flood risk reduction planning. He also has worked on a project through a grant from the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission that analyzes the socio-economic and demographic disparities in power outages and energy insecurity. His future research will encompass infrastructure vulnerabilities, more effective disaster evacuation methods, and the role of disaster risk financing mechanisms. Bhattacharyya, who worked as a senior civil engineer in India for two years, has attended an ADVANCE workshop on faculty diversity and served as a mentor to help incoming graduate students navigate their new landscape. In his future DEI-centered classroom, he will work to build the confidence of women and URMs by highlighting the success stories of established professionals in STEM who are from underrepresented groups.

Research Interests

Disaster Risk Reduction