Pan Asian Risk Reduction (PARR) fellowships

Rina Suryani Oktari (Okta), was one of the first early career scientists to receive a research fellowship award during the inugural round of the Pan-Asia Risk Reduction (PARR) Fellowship Program. Okta notes, “The PARR fellowship experience enhanced my skills and built my capacity to be an outstanding scientist, especially in bridging science into practice to build safer and resilient communities.”

During her residence period in Kyoto University, she conducted research on the role of school-community networks in enhancing coastal community resilience in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. She participated in the university’s International Environment and Disaster Management laboratory and learned new research techniques to analyze her data sets. As a result, her research has since been published and shared with the broader scientific community in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.

Now back at her home institution, Okta currently serves as a lecturer and researcher at Syiah Kuala University and is a coordinator of disaster education and management research group at Tsunami and Disaster Mitigation Research Center.