Dr. Naim Kapucu is Pegasus Professor at the University of Central Florida (UCF) and was the director of the School of Public Administration at UCF between August 2015 – August 2020. He is the founding director of the Center for Public and Nonprofit Management (CPNM) at UCF (2008-2011).

Dr. Kapucu's main research interests are emergency and crisis management, network leadership and governance, decision-making in complex environments, and social inquiry and public policy, and collaborative public management. Dr. Kapucu has published widely in areas of public administration and policy, network governance, crisis leadership, and emergency management. His work has been published in Public Administration Review, Administration & Society, Journal of Public Administration Theory and Research, the American Review of Public Administration, Public Administration, International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, and Disasters: The Journal of Disaster Studies, Policy, and Management. He is the author and editor of ten books including: Network governance (with Qian Hu); The Network Governance in Response to Acts of Terrorism: Comparative Analyses, Managing Emergencies and Crises (with Alp Ozerdem), Disaster Resiliency: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (with Hawkins, and Rivera), and Disaster and Development (with Liou). He is in editorial board of more than twenty journals in his field.

Dr. Kapucu has received many accolades and awards for his research at the university-wide level and at academic conferences. He received the Best Paper Award for his article titled “Communication in Crisis: Boundary Spanners in Multi-agency Coordination” at the 65th ASPA National Conference in 2004. He was a recipient of the William Petak Award, Section on Emergency and Crisis Management (SECM) for the best paper on an Emergency Management topic at the 2011 ASPA Annual Conference. He also received an Outstanding Paper Award at the Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2011 for the article entitled “Collaborative emergency management and national emergency management network” published in Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal. Dr. Kapucu was a recipient of the 2019 Pegasus Professor Award (the highest faculty distinction at UCF) and the Luminary Award in 2017. Dr. Kapucu has received an Excellence in Research Award in 2010 and a Research Incentive Award in 2009 and 2015. He has also been inducted into the University of Central Florida Millionaires Club for receiving more than a million dollars in external funding. He has received grants from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture (USDA), National Science Foundation (NSF), US Health and Human Services Agency (HHS), and US Department of Education among others.

He teaches network governance, leadership in public service, emergency and crisis management, and network analysis in public policy and management courses. He is a recipient of the Teaching Faculty Leadership Award for 2004-2005 academic year and Service Learning Faculty Recognition Award for the academic year 2006-2007 at the University of Central Florida. He, also, received the Teaching Incentive Program (TIP) Award (university-wide competitive award) in 2009, an Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award in the College of Health and Public Affairs in 2010 and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Award from UCF in 2011.

He taught at the University of Pittsburgh (PA), Penn State University (PA), and Robert Morris University (PA) before coming to UCF in 2003.Dr. Kapucu received his Ph.D. in Public and International Affairs from the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA) of the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2003. Prior to that, he earned a Master of Public Policy and Management degree from Heinz College's School of Public Policy and Management, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1997.