Atefeh Alipour: Flooding experience from childhood motivates research today

This piece was written in the spring of 2026 by GRAD 5144 (Communicating Science) student Atefeh Alipour as part of an assignment to write a personal narrative about her research.

Once upon a time, back home, when I was about ten years old, I was lying in my room, relaxing before going to sleep, when I suddenly heard the loud sound of thunder and saw lightning.

    I stood up and went to look at the street by the window. I saw that the water was rising rapidly, and finally it got to the top of the cars on the street. 

    That was the first time I saw flooding. 

    A couple of days after that, my family and I heard that people had died because of the flooding. Some of them got stuck in their homes, and some of them died because they got caught in the streets and were hit by large objects. 

    This made me curious about how people can be safe during flooding and how we can make sure no one dies because of flooding. Is there any way to do that? This was the question in my childhood mind. This early experience made me begin to think of solving problems. 

    I found myself to be a person who wants to solve a problem by thinking and eventually helping people and the world. I was really interested in physics and math during my high school years. I wanted to do something related to physics that could be applicable in the real world, so I chose civil engineering. I intended to design buildings, skyscrapers, or very well-structured buildings, strong ones that would be safe during natural hazards. 

    I started my bachelor's degree work in civil engineering. However, I quickly noticed that civil engineering is not just about buildings and skyscrapers. During my bachelor’s, I learned that people who study water resources can help with flooding and predicting natural hazards to contribute to the safety of people and infrastructure. I found water resources and coastal engineering to be more aligned with my interests and the passions in my life than designing buildings and skyscrapers.

    So when I moved into a master's degree program, it was in coastal engineering. My research was on wave and sea water level modeling during hurricanes and tropical storms. Now I am doing my Ph.D. at Virginia Tech and working on predicting and analyzing the tropical cyclone surges that cause coastal flooding. 

    Nowadays, when I see a thunderstorm or lightning, my vision is quite different from that of my childhood. Then I was experiencing my very first flood, but now I know that sea level rise is an increasing threat, and my work is devoted to helping keep people safe during hurricanes.