Biography
DeeDee Bennett Gayle, PhD
Associate Professor at the University at Albany (New York)
Dr. Bennett Gayle is an Associate Professor in the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Her research interests include emergency management, socially vulnerable populations during disasters, emergency communications, disaster policy, and mobile wireless communications. She broadly examines the influence and integration of advanced technologies on the practice of emergency management, and for use by vulnerable populations.
She has secured 12 internal and external research grants from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Homeland Security. Of note, she was the PI for the NSF INCLUDES -funded, Scholars from Under-represented Groups in Engineering and Social Sciences Building Capacity in Disaster (SURGE), design and development launch pilot. Additionally, she currently administers the annual state of the community survey of emergency management academic programs on behalf of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Her work is published in various journals and she has presented at several conferences related to emergency management, disability, wireless technology, and future studies. She is also a co-author on five Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulatory filings, many of which were cited in rulemakings. Her previous appointments include Assistant Professor and Director of the Emergency Management and Disaster Science program at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and Research Scientist at the Center for Advanced Communications Policy at Georgia Institute of Technology.
Dr. Bennett Gayle received her Ph.D. from Oklahoma State University in Fire and Emergency Management. In addition to bringing expertise in emergency management, she has a unique academic background having received both her M.S. in Public Policy and B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is an advisory board member for the Institute for Diversity and Inclusion in Emergency Management (I-DIEM), and the North American Alliance of Hazards and Disaster Research Institutes (NAAHDRI). She is also a member of the advisory committee for the Social Science Extreme Events Reconnaissance (SSEER) and the Interdisciplinary Science Extreme Events Reconnaissance (ISEER)- both within the NSF-FUNDED CONVERGE initiative.
