Postdoctoral Associate
Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub)
Xukai Zhang is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT. His research focuses on natural hazard damage prediction to improve the resilience of civil and energy infrastructure systems. He studies how extreme environmental hazards—such as hurricanes and sea-level rise—translate into structural damage and economic losses. His work integrates probabilistic modeling, engineering mechanics, digital-twin approaches, and data-driven methods to better understand how environmental hazards affect buildings, communities, and infrastructure systems.
Xukai’s work has been published in leading journals, including Structural Safety and Renewable Energy. He is the recipient of the ASCE O.H. Ammann Fellowship and other awards recognizing his research contributions. He has presented his research at international conferences such as the Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI) Conference. In addition to his academic research, he has experience applying data science techniques to engineering problems, including participation in competitions such as the ASCE–EMI Structural Health Monitoring for Wind Energy Challenge and TAMIDS Student Data Science Competition.
As a CEE Communication Lab Fellow, Xukai enjoys helping students communicate complex technical ideas clearly and effectively. He provides feedback on journal manuscripts, conference presentations, research proposals, posters, and academic or professional documents, and is particularly interested in helping researchers develop clear and compelling data visualizations.
Xukai received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Texas A&M University in 2025. Outside of research, he enjoys traveling, boxing, exploring new restaurants, and photography.