Makarand (Mark) Hastak is Professor of Civil Engineering at Purdue University,USA and Vice President of CIB.
Our conversation covered his early career as a consultant in the industry before he studied for a PhD and then stayed in academia, and his research interests including risk management and strategic decision-making, and disaster risk reduction and infrastructure resilience. We also covered the “enticing prospect” of being able to lower barriers to entry for future students as a result of adopting hybrid/online teaching models, potentially increasing the number of people able to undertake higher levels of education and research. Mark’s closing message for policy-makers was to “promote a better interaction and synergy between academia, industry and government.”
