Boston College Wins $328K Grant for Flood Research

A three-year National Science Foundation grant will fund student-built rainfall sensors to track hyperlocal flooding data across the city.

Updated on Nov. 2, 2026 in Financial Aid

Photograph of a weathered rain gauge with a clear funnel mounted on a street light pole in front of a wet brick rowhouse on an overcast day. — Boston College engineers received a three-year, $328,000 National Science Foundation grant to build student-assembled rainfall sensors tracking hyperlocal urban flooding. AI Illustration. Upload story photo >

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Boston College's engineering department has received a three-year, $328,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study urban flooding. The program will develop low-cost kits that let middle school students build rainfall sensors and collect hyperlocal data.

Why it matters

Measurements from a limited number of monitoring stations may not capture conditions in every neighborhood, leaving gaps in flood prediction data. Hyperlocal rainfall readings from student-built sensors could help fill those gaps across Boston.

The NSF grant totals $328,000 over three years and aims to involve hundreds of students. The extraction does not specify how many sensors will be deployed or how the data's accuracy will be validated.

The players

National Science Foundation

The U.S. federal agency that funds basic research and education in science and engineering across the country.

Boston College

A private Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, whose engineering department received the grant.

Catherine Hoar

An assistant professor of engineering at Boston College who serves as the principal investigator on the project.

The details

Principal investigator Catherine Hoar, an assistant professor of engineering, leads the project with co-principal investigators Siddhartan Govindasamy and Avneet Hira. Students will assemble kits containing a rainfall sensor, mounting materials and networking components, and send collected data to an online dashboard, with undergraduates from Boston College and New York University working alongside middle school educators.

Three-year grant period covering the initial phase of the research program.
Beyond the initial three years, the team plans to expand the sensor network to additional schools.

Season Trajectory

The project builds on the National Science Foundation's long-standing practice of pairing university research with student-facing education programs. It positions Boston College's engineering department within a growing set of federally funded efforts to bring environmental sensing into K-12 classrooms.

Middle school students in participating schools will build rainfall sensors and contribute data to an online dashboard. Students and educators at participating schools will gain hands-on engineering experience through the program.

The takeaway

Hands-on, community-sourced data collection can give cities a finer view of how rain behaves street by street. Students who build the sensors themselves gain practical engineering skills while contributing to real flood research.