The Coast Whisperer
Civil engineer Ali Farhadzadeh turns a childhood fascination with waves into a mission to protect coastal communities
By Rob Emproto
Long before he became a civil engineer, Ali Farhadzadeh was fascinated by the waves that destroyed his childhood sandcastles. Though he was too young to comprehend the science of swash — the turbulent layer of water that washes up on the beach after an incoming wave has broken — it was a fascination that would drive his future studies and career as a researcher at Stony Brook.
“When I was a kid, I liked to build things,” said Farhadzadeh, an associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, of which coastal engineering is a branch. “Where I grew up in Iran, there was a lot of postwar infrastructure damage so civil engineering was a field that many students wanted to pursue after high school.”
As his studies progressed at Iran’s University of Tabriz, he realized that issues affecting the coast and water resources was a field that was less developed than other branches of engineering. For someone who grew up in a coastal town on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea, witnessing both the beauty and the power of the water, the decision to pursue coastal engineering was, as Farhadzadeh puts it, a “no-brainer.”
Farhadzadeh initially came to the United States to study coastal engineering, ending up at the University of Delaware, where he earned his PhD, graduating in 2011. He then worked mostly on FEMA flood studies for various parts of the U.S. and took away a practical understanding of how floods impact coastal communities.
As part of this job, Farhadzadeh went out into communities to talk to people about what they experienced during hurricanes. In the process, he began to develop a skill — creating flood maps — that would underpin his future work.
“The goal was to develop flood maps to identify which zones are safer and which zones were in the biggest danger when it comes to ‘100-year flood’ events,” he said. “It required theoretical knowledge and the ability to frame the storm in terms the general public could relate to.”
It wasn’t long before he noticed gaps in the science in certain aspects of coastal engineering, which required more knowledge to design better solutions to protect coastal communities from storms. At that point, he made the career choice to pursue an academic job in the field of coastal engineering and work to develop some theoretical background and solutions for the problem in practice. Long Island — and Stony Brook — was a natural choice.
“As far as coastal issues, there are many similarities between where I grew up in Iran and Long Island,” he said. “You see the same fishermen going to the sea to catch fish, and people living in coastal areas suffering from storms and erosion, and all the same aspects of coastal engineering. The U.S. has a variety of different shorelines. The beaches might be different, but waves do the same thing to Long Island that they do to the Black Sea, the Mediterranean and other places.”
“You have coastal issues on the North Shore and Long Island Sound, near where I live, that are totally different from the marine environment of the South Shore, where you have an actual ocean and beaches,” he said. “Aside from my own personal interest in the science, it was a natural destination for my academic career.”
Farhadzadeh joined Stony Brook in 2014, two years after Superstorm Sandy devastated much of Long Island and the East Coast.
Some of the tanks Farhadzadeh and his students use to test the power of waves
“There was an initiative at the time for coastal zone management, jointly developed by the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) and the College of Engineering for coastal zone management, and I was one of those hires,” he said. The initiative aimed to address coastal issues, and required bringing in researchers of different expertise, including engineering, policymaking, economics, sustainability and more.
“These were dual appointment positions because it makes sense for engineers to work with other specialists,” said Farhadzadeh. “Being part of SoMAS gives me the opportunity to interact with people in relevant fields beyond my expertise, and also being part of the conversation around what type of research to do. You get to see other angles. That’s engineering.”
By expanding the conversation, Farhadzadeh hopes it will help him increase public awareness of what people who live in coastal areas can expect, and try to communicate solutions and options that enhance safety. As far as his research goes, Farhadzadeh said his main goal is to develop a better understanding of various processes in coastal environments that impact communities.
“Once we understand the process, we’ll have a better idea how to convert them to practical approaches,” he said. “The goal is to improve the design codes for development in coastal areas, but that requires us to understand what we are going to be dealing with in terms of the wave force, the erosion that the building might be affected by and so on.”
The Next Wave
As a professor, his goal is to nurture a new generation of coastal engineers who appreciate the complexity of coastal systems and are confident enough to apply their theoretical backgrounds to design better coastal structures and develop better protection for coastal communities.
Tao Xiang, PhD ’25, a recent civil engineering graduate, describes his experience in Farhadzadeh’s lab as both rewarding and formative. “The environment was collaborative and supportive, and I had the chance to advance my skills in numerical modeling,” said Xiang. “Farhadzadeh fostered independence while always being available with guidance, creating a balance that helped me grow as a researcher. One of the most valuable lessons I learned from him was to always connect research with real-world engineering practice. That approach taught me not only the importance of rigor, but the value of practical insight when approaching complex problems.”
Xiang earned a doctorate in civil engineering centering on coastal engineering, and plans to pursue a career in coastal and structural engineering, with a focus on coastal resilience and infrastructure.
“The technical expertise, problem-solving mindset, and practical guidance I gained under his mentorship have prepared me to contribute to sustainable shoreline solutions,” said Xiang.
Xiang’s experience is illustrative of Farhadzadeh’s belief that practical science relies heavily on human input.
“This science is not just a natural process, it’s also a human one,” Farhadzadeh said. “You really have to work with the people in the community and make sure that what you are proposing is adaptable and is going to be adopted by the human being.”
As science evolves, so too do the challenges facing scientists. “One of the biggest issues we deal with, not just in the U.S., is that it’s human nature that people forget things,” he said. “Right after Superstorm Sandy, there were a lot of research activities and studies happening because it was fresh in people’s minds. They remembered what they saw. But over time that memory decays and people forget. And students today may not know much because they were too young, so the urgency goes away. Once there is no urgency, it’s harder to do research and get grants.”
What’s more, Farhadzadeh said, the actual research needs to evolve over time. Farhadzadeh’s lab has recently been updated with the capability of simulating real-world tidal wave processes, and he is in the process of adding wind-generating systems to replicate storm wind. “This added capability will allow us to study wind energy systems in a marine environment. We’ll have waves and current together, so we can replicate the actual situation during a windstorm better.”
Looking ahead, Farhadzadeh said climate concerns will increasingly impact his work.
“There is disagreement about whether climate change is real or not, but obviously the situation on the coasts is getting worse in terms of storm intensity and strength,” he said. “With the growing threat of climate-related disasters, the need for doing more research in coastal engineering and science is only going to grow. As climate science has evolved, we have to update our own approaches.”