Emin Y. Menteşe
Emin Y. Menteşe is an Associate Senior Researcher at CUDRR+R.
Dr. Emin Y. Menteşe’s work focuses on different aspects of disaster risk reduction and urban resilience with an interdisciplinary perspective. As a geomatic engineer and an urban planner, an expert in the field of GIS, one of his core skills and interests is developing geospatial solutions that address different components of disaster risk such as modelling exposure, visualising impacts and web-based tools to analyse disaster risk. In addition to his GIS skills, his PhD (Istanbul Technical University, 2019) is on urban planning with a particular focus on assessing the environmental sustainability performance of spatial plans. Combined with his experience in Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality’s “earthquake department”, his skillset provides an interdisciplinary background that spans urban planning, geospatial modelling, resilience and sustainability. He has taken part in several projects on earthquake risk assessment, landslide modelling, and tsunami risk management in the Istanbul context.
As a post-doctoral researcher at Boğaziçi University, Emin Mentese conducted research in the fields of exposure modelling, geospatial infrastructure development and risk-informed participatory urban planning in different contexts such as Kathmandu, Quito, Nablus and Nairobi. He is also the co-founder and co-director of the start-up company Anofa Engineering, Planning and Informatics Ltd. (based in Turkey) working in the fields of disaster risk assessment, urban planning and geospatial solutions for decision-making.
Dian (Eric) Xia
Dian (Eric) Xia is an Associate Junior Researcher and Graphic Designer at CUDRR+R.
Eric is an urban planner with interest in urban data analytics, built environment resiliency, and international planning. He holds a Master’s degree in Urban Planning from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s degree in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley. His thesis focused on climate and social resilience of the transit systems in New York City. As an environmental planner, Eric is working on environmental impact evaluation and resilience assessments for development projects and is interested in combining international planning with resilience development. With experiences in graphic design, at CUDRR+R he is responsible for the design of research project outputs and website updates.
Hui Chen
Hui Chen is an Intern Researcher at CUDRR+R.
Hui is an urban planner with a focus on sustainable mobility, urban data analytics, and resilience planning. She holds a Master’s degree in Urban Planning from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s degree in Urban Forestry from the University of British Columbia. With a background in urban forestry, she brings an ecological perspective to urban resilience research, linking landscape systems, environmental planning, and climate adaptation strategies.
At CUDRR+R, Hui contributes to research on climate-resilient urban systems and supports data visualization for project communications.
Akhil Akash Vadlamudi
Akhil Akash Vadlamudi is an Intern Researcher at CUDRR+R.
Akhil Akash Vadlamudi is an urban planner and landscape architect specializing in community development and urban analytics. He is particularly interested in ecological and environmental planning, with a focus on nature-based solutions that build climate resilience. Akhil has a Master’s in Urban Planning from Columbia University, and Master’s and Bachelor’s in architecture from Vijayawada, India.
Akhil’s research focuses on applying spatial analytical techniques to climate-related data in order to support informed decision-making on climate change and urban planning. At CUDRR+R, Akhil recently supported the project on Traditional Housing Design with Natural Cooling Techniques as part of a partnership with SEEDS for Priority 3 of the 2025 G20 Disaster Risk Reduction Working Group.