Rate My Professor Nina Stark

Nina Stark is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil & Coastal Engineering at the University of Florida, where she joined in 2023 as faculty lead of the coastal and marine geotechnics research group and currently serves as Director of the Center for Coastal Solutions. Previously, she held positions as Associate Professor from 2019 to 2023 and Assistant Professor from 2013 to 2019 in the geotechnical engineering program at Virginia Tech. Her postdoctoral research appointments were at the University of Bremen from 2011 to 2012 and at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, from 2012 to 2013. Stark earned her PhD in Marine Geotechnics from the University of Bremen in 2011 and her MS (Diploma) in Geophysics from Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany, in 2007.

Stark's research centers on coastal and marine geotechnics, encompassing geotechnical storm and flood reconnaissance, sediment dynamics, structure-seabed interactions, coastal and riverine morphodynamics, beach trafficability, and mitigation strategies for extreme events. She has directed post-event reconnaissance missions for Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma in 2017, Tropical Storm Melissa in 2019, western European floods in 2021, the Yellowstone Flood in 2022, and Hurricane Idalia in 2023, contributing to enhanced community resilience and understanding of coastal impacts. Her leadership extends to a $7.5 million Office of Naval Research project aimed at improving safety on hazardous tidal mudflats through advanced mapping and prediction. Stark has received the NSF CAREER Award and the ONR Young Investigator Award in 2018, and she led the SERDP Project of the Year in 2022. Notable publications include 'Geotechnical Properties from Portable Free Fall Penetrometer Measurements in Coastal Environments' (Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, 2023), 'Geotechnical Characterization of a Tidal Estuary Mudflat Using Portable Free-Fall Penetrometers' (Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, 2023), and 'Geotechnical Measurements for the Investigation and Assessment of Arctic Coastal Erosion—A Review and Outlook' (Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, 2022).