KU engineering professor wins Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists
LAWRENCE — A professor from the University of Kansas School of Engineering is the winner of one of the country’s most significant prizes for early-career researchers.
Elaina Sutley, associate professor of civil, environmental & architectural engineering and KU Engineering associate dean for impact & belonging, is the laureate of the 2025 Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists in the Physical Sciences and Engineering category. She is KU’s first-ever laureate.
The Blavatnik Awards, independently administered by The New York Academy of Sciences, honor researchers nationwide in three categories: Life Sciences, Chemical Sciences and Physical Sciences and Engineering. The laureates in each category receive an unrestricted award of $250,000 — the world’s largest unrestricted science prize available for early-career scientists. Winners were announced Tuesday night and recognized at a ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
"The University of Kansas is proud to celebrate this extraordinary recognition of Dr. Sutley’s research,” said University of Kansas Chancellor Douglas A. Girod. “Her work has tremendous potential to improve lives, increase safety and enhance communities in Kansas and beyond.”
Sutley’s research focuses on natural hazards and disasters, community resilience and long-term housing recovery with a focus on helping to modernize building codes across the country. The goal is to make communities more resilient while helping policymakers and local leaders make informed decisions about the most effective ways to prepare for and recover from these disasters.
“Dr. Sutley winning the Blavatnik Award is a source of pride for the entire KU community. It is a tremendous honor to see her important work recognized on the national level,” said Mary Rezac, dean of the KU School of Engineering. “With natural hazards and disasters increasing potential harm to structures and society, her research is critical to safety and security around the globe.”
Sutley joined KU in 2015. She has worked on numerous projects funded by the National Science Foundation, as well as being part of the 10-year Center for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Sutley earned her doctorate in civil engineering from Colorado State. During her time at CSU, she was co-trained in sociology, setting her research on a path to put people at the center of her engineering research.
Prior to CSU, Sutley earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering from the University of Alabama.
Recognized alongside Sutley as laureates are Philip Kranzusch, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School in Life Sciences; and Frank Leibfarth, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Chemical Sciences.
About the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists
The Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists, established by the Blavatnik Family Foundation in 2007 and independently administered by The New York Academy of Sciences, began by identifying outstanding postdoctoral scientists in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. In 2014, the Blavatnik National Awards were created to recognize faculty-rank scientists throughout the United States. In 2017, the awards were further expanded to honor faculty-rank scientists in the United Kingdom and Israel.
About Sutley’s research
Sutley studies the impact of earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, floods and tornadoes. Her research addresses the question: As population growth and climate changes make these disastrous events more unpredictable and extreme, how can we ensure that people living in hazard-prone areas are kept safe and with stable housing before, during and after these forces of nature?