Art historian turned civil engineer, Prof. Debra Laefer has devoted her research career to the protection of historic structures. With degrees from Columbia University, NYU, and the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, she moved to the School of Civil, Structural & Environmental Engineering at the University College in Dublin Ireland in 2004 to be closer to her core research topic and to be with her German born husband who is also her collaborator.
Prof. Laefer received her ERC grant in 2012 to rethink how tunnel-induced risk is predicted for above ground structures. This topic has deeply extended her work in laser scanning, data indexing, and the automatic generation of city-scale computational models. Prof. Laefer’s Urban Modelling Group is composed of 3 post-doctoral researchers, 12 doctoral students, 5 master’s students, and 2 technicians.
- Project: Rethinking Tunnelling in Urban Neighbourhoods (RETURN)
- Host Institution: University College Dublin, National University Of Ireland, Dublin.
- Call details: Starting Grant , ERC-2012-StG, panel PE8
- Project at the ERC: https://erc.europa.eu/projects-and-results/erc-stories/engineering-safer-cities
