Jenniffer Santos-Hernández is a doctoral student
in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the
University of Delaware. She entered the program after receiving
a B.A. in Sociology at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez
(UPRM). As an undergraduate, she completed a certification
in International Population and Development from the University
of Michigan-Population Fellows Program that took her to
Petén, Guatemala to work with a local NGO in the
Mayan Biosphere Reserve. She also completed a certification
in Applied Social Research from the University of Puerto
Rico-Center for Applied Social Research (CISA); where she
also worked for three years as a research assistant for
several projects. Jenniffer joined the DRC on August, 2004.
In 2007, Santos-Hernández completed her Master's degree. Her thesis
focused on Development, Vulnerability and Disasters in Puerto
Rico.
Her interests include: Critical Demography,
Collective Behavior, Social Movements, Disasters, Risk Communication, Race, Class and
Gender, Latino/a Sociology, Development, Social Change,
Sociological Theory, and GIS. As part
of her work at DRC, she is the lead graduate research assistant
on the DRC-End-User Integration project and the Puerto Rico Student
Led Test Bed, which are part of the Collaborative Adaptive
Sensing of the Atmosphere project (CASA) and funded by the
National Science Foundation (NSF). Currently she is the
lead graduate student of an interdisciplinary research effort
focusing on vulnerability and resilience in flood prone
areas of Puerto Rico. For the past three years she also
served as the lead graduate student for the project “Population
Composition, Geographic Distribution, and Natural Hazards:
Vulnerability in the Coastal Regions of Puerto Rico”
which was funded by the Sea Grant College Program (NOAA).
In addition, Jenniffer is also a representative of the Student
Leadership Council of the National Science Foundation.
