Spotlights

John Renne
John Renne Featured on WPTV's To the Point Coastal Communities Rebuilding from Hurricane Ian

John Renne, Ph.D., joins host Michael Williams to discuss changes needed for our coastal communities as they rebuild following the destruction caused by Hurricane Ian.  Read more.

John Renne
WPTV - 30-year Anniversary of Hurricane Andrew

John Renne, Ph.D., Professor and Director for the Center for Urban & Environmental Solutions, addresses his research efforts with evacuation planning.  Read more.

Lilah Besser
Lilah Besser, PhD

Dr. Lilah Besser, Assistant Professor at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning and I-HEALTH, has been awarded a National Institute on Aging career development award (NIA K01), totaling $632,070 over 5 years. Focusing on “Longitudinal associations between neighborhood greenspace and brain aging in cognitively normal older adults”, the grant provides Dr. Besser with the opportunity to obtain didactic and experiential training in her field of expertise, and to conduct a rigorous research study. The career development portion will involve a mentoring team of experts in urban and regional planning, neurology, epidemiology, brain imaging, and neighborhood environments and health, from FAU, University of Miami, Columbia University, Louisiana State University, and Drexel University. The research portion will study participants from 3 NIA-funded Alzheimer’s Disease Centers, investigating if exposure to greater neighborhood greenspace in early, mid, and late-life is associated with healthy brain aging as measured via regional brain volumes and longitudinal decline on multiple cognitive domains. The ultimate goal is to provide evidence for community-level interventions that can increase cognitive resilience and healthy behaviors throughout the lifespan, promoting healthy brain aging and allowing older adults to age in place.

Lilah Besser
Historic Preservation
Historic Preservation in Pearl City

Retired planner Charles Graves is leading a historic preservation project in the 100-year-old community of Pearl City in Boca Raton. By leveraging FAU Community Engagement funding with the support of CUES, he has completed two rounds of interviews with community leaders and secured a grant from Florida Humanities. He is pursuing further funding from the National Trust for Historic Preservation aimed at an expansion of the district designation as well as historic landmarks in the area, and federal designation, historic tax credits, and marketing for redevelopment with other initiatives. The finished videos and supporting documentation will be posted on the community website under development.

Newly Published Research Analyzes Crash Frequency
Published Research Analyzes Crash Frequency

Dibakar Saha, Ph.D., and Eric Dumbaugh, Ph.D. co-authored a new research article that analyzed three years of crash data to model frequency. The article, “Application of the Poisson-Tweedie distribution in analyzing crash frequency data”, appears in the Elsevier journal Accident Analysis & Prevention (Vol. 137, March 2020).