RESEARCH Affiliates
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Dr. Renne is a globally recognized expert in Transit Oriented Development (TOD), including sustainable and resilient cities, with a focus on land use and transportation planning and policy. He is an expert in evacuation planning and coined the term “carless evacuation” in 2005. Dr. Renne played a leadership role in the disaster recovery of New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina.
Dr. Renne serves as a Professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, where he coordinates the undergraduate programs. |
CUES Faculty Affiliates
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Lilah M. Besser, Ph.D., MSPH
Dr. Besser is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning and in the Institute for Healthy Aging and Lifespan Studies at Florida Atlantic University. Her current research is primarily focused on the intersection between neighborhoods, the built environment, aging, and health. |
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Dr. Bloetscher's research includes water resource issues associated with waste disposal, including injection wells, membrane concentrate management, water resource management, utility finance and management, water conservation practices, wastewater disposal practice risk assessments, endocrine disruptor impacts and nutrient impacts in the coastal water of SE Florida. |
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Dr. Bourassa has earned international honors in the field of real estate and served multiple chairmanships, editorial and faculty positions in the US, Australia and New Zealand. House prices, housing tenure, land tenure, and property taxes are among the main subjects of his research. |
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Dr. Chava's research focuses on using advanced data science in the fields of transportation and real estate. She analyzes hidden patterns and trends to predict the future and to narrate the stories. She obtained knowledge in various data analytical techniques, programming languages, machine learning algorithms and statistical tools along with various transportation planning packages. One current project is predicting the change in land and rental values and socioeconomic profile of residents around transit station areas, improving public transit reliability using ticketing data. |
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Dr. Huber's work focuses on interdisciplinary public work projects that combine ecological, landscape, urban, and architectural design. He is currently researching issues of sea level rise in south Florida and has established over a quarter of a million dollars in grant funding in that effort through the National Endowment of the Arts and Florida Sea Grant programs. |
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Dr. Li’s research focuses on housing and community development, and real estate and urban economics. She is very interested in policies related to affordable housing, sustainable community development, housing programs for people with special needs, and disaster adaptation and mitigation policies related to housing. She currently conducts research on community social capital and its planning implications, spatial patterns of second homes, and applied planning methods. |
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Dr. Merlin’s current research concerns how to better integrate transportation and land use through the development of accessibility-based performance measures and tools, as well as the implications of self-driving cars for the transportation sustainability. |
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Dr. Mitsova’s research focuses on the use of geographic information systems, spatial and statistical analysis to conduct interdisciplinary research aimed at understanding the interactions between ecosystems and urban environments, and informing sustainable urban planning and environmental practices. Her collaborations include projects with USGS, the National Park Service, The Nature Conservancy, and the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. |
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Dr. Polsky serves as director of the Florida Center for Environmental Studies (CES) with the vision of improving Florida's sustainability through research, education and outreach on wetlands ecology and coastal resilience. CES collaborates with CUES on the FAU Incubator for Sustainable & Resilient Communities. |
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Dr. Sapat's expertise encompasses disaster management, public policy processes, vulnerability and resilience assessment, and methodology. She has been involved in a number of initiatives including NSF funded projects on building code regulations, population displacement after disasters and implications for housing, the role of the NGOs in disaster recovery, and critical infrastructure resilience. |
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Professor Savitch is a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Washington, DC) and Emeritus Brown and Williamson Professor, University of Louisville. He is currently working on issues related to policy transfer across metropolitan jurisdictions and analyses of regional resilience in the wake of natural disasters. |
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CUES Staff and Graduate Students
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Serena Hoermann is CUES Assistant Director, administers the FAU Partnership for Sustainable Communities and is a doctoral student in public administration. She joined SURP/CUES in 2017 to support communications and community engagement efforts. One current project, the Urban Stories Festival , uses storytelling to build community. In 2014-2016 she supported FAU's Florida Center for Environmental Studies (CES) as coordinator for the Florida Climate Institute. |
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Paula Lopez is a MURP student at FAU's Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. Currently, she is working with Dr. John Renne and Serena Hoermann, doing research on sea-level rise and transportation solutions for students. Paula is interested in environmental planning and sustainable development. Previously, Paula has worked with international communities in disaster relief projects and after graduation, she hopes to continue her work in this field, as well as helping local communities adopt new sustainable development policies. |
Paula Lopez