Sandra Maria Pichler (née Pfister) has been working on social science disaster research since 2016. 

Her professional background lies in sociology and global studies (focus on environment/technology and culture/society). In 2017, she moved to the Johannes Kepler University in Linz as a university assistant and doctoral student in sociology and has repeatedly held teaching positions at the Karl Franzens University in Graz.

In her research, she primarily deals with a field-theoretical approach to disaster management and its susceptibility to failure, resilience, and adaptability. Other subject areas of her previous research also include knowledge-sociological approaches to the catastrophe (patterns of interpretation of the catastrophe, memory of the catastrophe) and gender-specific aspects in catastrophe research. 

She has been a research associate at DCNA since 2022 where she is currently responsible for the projects KI-SecAssist, ScubaPOIs, CERTIFIER and FireWise.