Dr. Nicole  Dash is Dean of the UNT College of Health & Public Service. Prior to that, she served as the Associate Dean of the college for more than a decade. Her limited research time focuses on partnering with Dr. Gary Webb on the NSF funded project examining Native American community disaster preparedness. She is also currently working on Mitigation Saves 2, a project of the National Institute of Building Sciences Multihazard Mitigation Council, which updates their earlier project that found, on average, that for every dollar of federal investment in mitigation spent, four dollars are saved.   In the update of the project, Dr. Dash helps to integrate social costs and benefits into the study parameters and  BCR calculations. The major addition to MSv2 related to her work on the project  is the inclusion of reduced PTSD costs as a benefit of mitigation.

Dr. Dash received her Ph.D. in Sociology in 2001 Florida International University where she worked with disaster research experts such as Walter G. Peacock and Betty H. Morrow. She has worked in disaster research since 1992’s Hurricane Andrew in Miami.  Besides her time at the University of North Texas, she has worked with the International Hurricane Research Center and the Laboratory for Social and Behavioral Research within the IHRC at Florida International University as both a project manager and senior researcher. In addition, she has worked for the Federal Emergency Management Agency on multiple disasters, and spent two years at the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware. Dr. Dash has received grants from the National Science Foundation, State of Florida and the International Hurricane Research Center to study evacuation and vulnerable populations