Catherine Lawson

With my Accounting/Economics degree, I was able to negotiate tax-deferred real estate exchanges for commercial and industrial properties. This sparked a need to understand planning, zoning, and rezoning regulations, and my move to Portland, Oregon, to obtain a Master's degree in Urban and Regional Planning, a Master's in Applied Economics, and a Ph.D. in Regional Science and Urban Studies at Portland State University. I established one of the first interdisciplinary freight research units, with planning, engineering, and the MBA program in logistics at PSU. In 2000, I took a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University at Albany. I also became affiliated faculty with the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity in their Informatics Ph.D. Program. Today, I am a Professor in the Department of Geography, Planning, & Sustainability, and the Director of the Master's in Urban and Regional Planning. I also am the Director of the Lewis Mumford Center and the Albany Visualization and Informatics Lab (AVAIL), specializing in software engineering and data science solutions for planning, including transportation and natural hazard mitigation (hazarddata.org).