Dr. Marc Levitan has been actively engaged in wind engineering research, practice, education, leadership, and technology transfer for almost 30 years, including the past 12 at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). He conducts research on tornadoes and hurricanes, their impacts, and mitigation in support of the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program (NWIRP), a multiagency program whose purpose is to achieve major measurable reductions in the losses of life and property from windstorms. Dr. Levitan served as the first Director (Acting) of NWIRP, from 2015-2018, and is currently its Lead Research Engineer. He was also the Lead Investigator for the National Construction Safety Team (NCST) Technical Investigation of the 2011 Joplin Tornado and for the NIST study of the 2013 Newcastle-Moore Oklahoma tornado. He currently heads implementation activities for many of the recommendations resulting from these tornado studies. Dr. Levitan served on FEMA’s Hurricane Maria Mitigation Assessment Team and is a member of NIST's National Construction Safety Team investigating Hurricane Maria and its impacts on Puerto Rico.
Dr. Levitan leads much of NIST’s R&D to improve windstorm provisions in model buildings codes and standards, design guidance, and practices for the construction and rehabilitation of buildings, structures, and lifelines, and leads several important standards committees. Dr. Levitan chairs the International Code Council’s committee developing ICC 500-2023 Standard on the Design and Construction of Storm Shelters, and chaired the committees that wrote the first and third editions of that Standard. An active member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), He chairs the ASCE 7 Tornado Task Committee that developed the new tornado load provisions in the ASCE/SEI 7-22 Standard on Minimum Design Loads, and co-chairs the committee developing a national standard for wind speed estimation in tornadoes and other windstorms, which will include major improvements to the EF Scale. He previously chaired the committee that wrote the ASCE Guidelines for Wind Loads on Petrochemical and Other Industrial Facilities, as well as the ASCE National Infrastructure and Research Policy Committee.
