Gonzalo Pita is an associate research scientist and director of the MS in Systems Engineering program in the Department of Civil and Systems Engineering. His research centers on the modeling of natural disaster risk, natural hazards (hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods), impacts of climate change, structural vulnerability, system dynamics, and public policy studies and implementation. He is also interested in the structure of catastrophe models, the influence of their outputs and uncertainty on risk management strategies, and their historical development from 1950 to date.
Since 2013, Pita has served as a senior consultant at the World Bank, where he has worked on projects in several countries of South and Central America, the Caribbean, and the Philippines. His work at the World Bank comprises natural hazards risk assessment and mitigation, design and implementation of risk-based asset management systems, and design of natural disaster mitigation public policy and study in cases of disaster risk financing.
He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in natural disaster risk modeling and system dynamics. He holds a bachelor’s in structural engineering from Universidad Tecnologica Nacional (Cordoba, Argentina), a master’s in seismic engineering from Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, a PhD from Florida Institute of Technology, and completed postdoctoral work at Johns Hopkins University.