Bio

Hana C. Long is research faculty in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering and the Operations Research program at NC State University. Her engineering work is community-driven, focusing on using data science, optimization and AI to strengthen infrastructure resilience and inform environmental decision-making. She works on interdisciplinary research projects involving AI-augmented flood warning, water security, and how data and AI are transforming professional training in engineering and management.

She currently leads and contributes to projects with the Institute for Transportation Research and Education (ITRE) and previously served as Coordinator for Data and AI at Work at NC State’s Data Science and AI Academy. Before joining NC State, Long was a project engineer with the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts and a researcher with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Community Resilience Group.

Area(s) of Expertise

Sustainable and resilient water, wastewater, and networked infrastructure; Environmental and infrastructure risk analysis; Data-driven environmental and engineering decision-making; Data and AI for engineering and public-sector applications; Community resilience; Ethics in data science and AI

Methodologies of Interest: Machine learning; Optimization and metaheuristics; Statistical modeling; Causal inference; LLMs and AI; Water and wastewater infrastructure modeling; Spatial analysis

Publications

• (Case Study) Generative AI and the Future Engineering Workforce: Bridging Educational Gaps through Employer Insight and Data-Driven Analysis , 2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings (2026)
• Predicting PFAS Exposure Risks from Rural Private Wells Using Integrated Mechanistic and Machine-Learned Bayesian Network Models , Environmental Science & Technology (2026)
• Water security in North Carolina’s most economically insecure county: a case study , Environmental Research Letters (2025)
• Shifting power: data democracy in engineering solutions , Environmental Research Letters (2024)
• Overcoming Modeling Barriers in Long-Term Interdependent Infrastructure Systems Planning , (2023)
• A Case Study Investigating Elevated Hydrogen Sulfide Within a Wastewater Treatment Plant , Odors and Air Pollutants Conference 2020 (2020)
• A Case Study for Investigating Elevated Hydrogen Sulfide within a Wastewater Treatment Plant , Water Environment Federation Odors and Air Pollutants Conference 2020 (2020)
• Concurrent Mainstream Deammonification and Phosphorus Removal Using the ANITA Mox Process: A Pilot-Scale Evaluation at the Joint Water Pollution Control Plant , WEFTEC 2019 (2019)
• Concurrent Mainstream Deammonification and Phosphorus Removal Using the ANITA Mox Process: A Pilot-Scale Evaluation at the Joint Water Pollution Control Plant (JWPCP) , Nutrient Removal and Recovery Symposium 2019 (2019)
• Modeling the resilience of critical infrastructure: the role of network dependencies , Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure (2016)