Location
IOE 2823
Phone
Primary Website
Biography
Personal Pronouns
she/her
Zaira Pagan-Cajigas is a fifth-year PhD candidate in the Industrial and Operations Engineering department at the University of Michigan, advised by Dr. Seth Guikema. She is the chair of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in INFORMS at UM, and serves on the leadership boards of the SRA Engineering and Infrastructure Specialty Group. She is also a SHPE Scholar and a Rackham Merit Fellow.
Research Interests
Zaira Pagan-Cajigas’ research centers on disaster risk assessment, resilience analysis, critical infrastructure, and predictive data analytics. Her previous work includes developing and applying a power outage prediction model to assess future impacts of tropical cyclones on power disruptions and creating a synthetic water distribution system using publicly available data for analyzing hazard impacts on water availability at the building level. Her current research evaluates how natural hazards affect the functionality of critical services and infrastructure, along with building-level access to essential services before, during, and after such events.
Education
- MS, University of Michigan, 2022, Industrial and Operations Engineering
- BS, University of Puerto Rico, 2020, Industrial Engineering
Awards
- University of Michigan Rackham Merit Fellow, 2020-2025
Professional Society Memberships
- Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)