Sonia Chao writes and teaches in the area of sustainable architecture and urbanism, resilient design, and historic preservation in the subtropics. Her scholarship explores the intersection between historic preservation, historic places and resilient design. Chao’s current research, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), studies the connections between a city’s built and social layers. The aim is to produce new meta-models, through a human-centered framework, to inform anticipatory guidelines for resilient urban and community design of coastal cities. In the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew (1992), Chao became the founding director for the University of Miami School of Architecture’s Center for Urban & Community Design and Chao has served as its director since 2006. Chao also helped create the new interdisciplinary Master of Professional Science in Urban Sustainability & Resilience program, which she co-directs, and that launched in the fall of 2020.
