BIOGRAPHY:
Pravin Maduwantha is a Ph.D. candidate in Dr. Thomas Wahl’s lab at the University of Central Florida. He earned his B.Sc. in Civil Engineering from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, where he also completed his M.Sc. in Civil Engineering with a research focus in coastal engineering. Pravin began his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at UCF in 2022.
RESEARCH:
Pravin’s research focuses on compound flooding in coastal regions, with an emphasis on understanding and modeling the joint impacts of multiple flood drivers, such as rainfall, storm surge, and excess river discharge, during extreme weather events. His work involves developing multivariate statistical frameworks and generating synthetic storm events to support hydrodynamic modeling and flood risk quantification. He has developed a statistical framework capable of using observed or hindcast data of flooding drivers to generate large numbers of synthetic storm events, which are essential for robust flood modeling. He also investigates how different types of storms (e.g., tropical cyclones, atmospheric rivers, and extratropical cyclones) generate compound flood hazards in estuarine and urban catchments.
CONTACT INFORMATION:
Email: pravin@ucf.edu