Matt Hatami

A bit about me

I am a PhD student in hydrology at the University of Florida, in the Climate Resilience Lab of Dr. Nasser Najibi’s research group. My research focuses on hydroclimate extremes and risk: characterizing and modeling floods, droughts, extreme precipitation and heatwaves, and developing stochastic decision frameworks that help infrastructure and ecosystems stay resilient under deep uncertainty.

I combine process-based and ensemble approaches, statistics, machine learning, remote sensing and geospatial tools to assess climate vulnerability across water, energy, transportation, agriculture and public health. Along the way I build the software that makes this analysis usable: web GIS applications, data pipelines and interactive tools like the globe on this site.

My path to this work started with river hydrology and hydraulics during my BSc in Iran, continued through disaster risk mitigation in Milan and cascading-disaster modeling in Groningen, and led to a PhD in water resources at the University of South Carolina before I moved to UF.

Research interests

Hydroclimate extremes, extreme precipitation, multi-hazard risk assessment, compound and cascading disasters, statistical analysis, water systems modeling, climate change adaptation, geospatial machine learning.

Education

2025–present
PhD in Hydrology, University of FloridaDepartment of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Climate Resilience Lab
2024–2025
PhD in Water Resources Engineering, University of South CarolinaiWERS lab, with Dr. Erfan Goharian; moved to UF
2023
MSc thesis work, University of Groningen, NetherlandsAgent-based model of human behavior during cascading disasters
2021–2023
MSc in Civil Engineering for Risk Mitigation, Politecnico di Milano, ItalyThesis: applications of deep learning and remote sensing in the disaster management cycle
2015–2021
BSc in Civil Engineering, Imam Khomeini International University, Iran

Experience

2025–present
Geospatial Application Development Intern, South Carolina Department of TransportationWeb GIS applications in ArcGIS Experience Builder, custom React widgets, real-time data APIs
2023–present
Geospatial Administrative Associate, Gamecock Geospatial Community, University of South CarolinaGIS meetings, workshops and outreach
2023–2024
Geospatial Data Scientist Intern, GEOAPP, Florence, ItalyA QGIS plugin and pipeline that cut the analysis of unstable ground in open-pit mines from 8 hours to 20 minutes per site

Honors and awards