Hagen Named Louisiana Sea Grant Laborde Chair

BATON ROUGE – Scott C. Hagen has been named the Louisiana Sea Grant John P. Laborde Endowed Chair for Sea Grant Research and Technology Transfer.

“Louisiana Sea Grant (LSG) is interested in providing additional support to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Weather Ready Nation program,” said Robert Twilley, LSG executive director. “Scott brings the background and experience to help achieve that objective. Additionally, his expertise in modeling coastal flooding during extreme weather events will tie in well with the Coastal Emergency Risk Assessment (CERA) program.” (http://coastalemergency.org)

Hagen comes to LSU from the University of Central Florida, where he was a professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental & Construction Engineering for more than 17 years. He received his Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of Notre Dame and his Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from the University of Iowa. He is a licensed professional engineer (P.E.) in the state of Florida, a diplomate of coastal engineering (D.CE), a diplomate of water resources engineering (D.WRE), and was recently named a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

Hagen is a past member of the Board of Governors for ASCE’s Coasts, Oceans, Ports and Rivers Institute and served as Chair of the Coastal & Estuarine Hydroscience Committee. In 2012, he chaired and hosted the 10th International Conference on Hydroscience & Engineering, where he was awarded the Outstanding Achievement Award for Advancement of the State-of-the-Art in Hydroscience & Engineering. He presently serves on the predictive modeling technical advisory group for the 2017 Louisiana Coastal Master Plan.

Hagen also will hold the rank of full professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Louisiana State University, along with an appointment in LSU’s Center for Computation & Technology. His primary research focus is on massively parallel, high performance computational modeling of ocean, coastal and inland shallow water flows. His recent efforts expand into transport and ecological modeling, particularly with respect to the coastal dynamics of sea level rise.

The John P. Laborde Endowed Chair for Sea Grant Research and Technology Transfer was established at LSU in 1994 with a gift of $600,000 from Tidewater Inc. and a match of $400,000 from the Louisiana Board of Regents. The Laborde Chair has enabled Louisiana Sea Grant to bring highly qualified scientists to LSU to focus on marine and coastal issues critical to the state.

Since its establishment in 1968, Louisiana Sea Grant (www.laseagrant.org) has worked to promote stewardship of the state’s coastal resources through a combination of research, education and outreach programs critical to the cultural, economic and environmental health of Louisiana’s coastal zone. Louisiana Sea Grant, based at Louisiana State University, is part of the National Sea Grant College Program, a network of 33 university-based programs in each of the U.S. coastal and Great Lakes states and Puerto Rico.

Slideshow photo credit: Josefa Holland-Merten