The Coasts, Oceans, Ports, and Rivers Institute (COPRI) of the American Society of Civil Engineers 
(ASCE) is pleased to announce the election of a new Secretary for its Board of Governors. Jennifer L. Irish, Ph.D, P.E., M.ASCE, an assistant professor of civil engineering at Texas A&M University in College Station, will serve a four-year term as COPRI Secretary beginning immediately. Irish has been an assistant professor at Texas A&M University at College Station since August 2006. She received her Ph.D from the University of Delaware in 2006, and earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Civil Engineering from Lehigh University.
A registered professional engineer in New York, her research interests include coastal storm damage and risk, coastal wetland processes and coastal processes. She currently teaches fluid dynamics, an undergraduate ocean engineering laboratory, graduate coastal engineering and graduate estuary hydrodynamics. Her research has been published in 25 conference proceedings and nearly 15 journals. She has been invited to present her research at nine seminars or conferences.
Prior to joining the Department of Civil Engineering, Irish served as a specialist for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers New York District from 2001-2006. She was a researcher at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory from 1994-2001. In 2008, she received the Department of the Army Superior Civilian Service Award. She received four other achievement awards from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from 2004 to 2007, and was the U.S. and international winner of the 1997 PIANC Gustav Willems Award.
Irish’s current research grants include studies of hurricane surge characterization for risk assessment, emergency response, and climate change; beach and barrier island storm morphodynamics; vegetated coastal hydrodynamics, including wave attenuation and storm surge in wetlands; tidal inlet hydrodynamics and morphodynamics; and coastal flood control structures.
