Dr. Cuff holds her primary appointment in the Department of Architecture and a joint appointment in Urban Planning. She is the founding director of cityLAB, a research center at UCLA that explores the challenges facing the 21st century metropolis through design and research. Cuff's work focuses on urban design, affordable housing, modernism, urban sensing technologies, and the politics of place.  She has published widely on these topics, including the books Fast Forward Urbanism (edited with Roger Sherman, Princeton Architectural 2011) and The Provisional City (MIT 2000), a project supported by both the Getty and the National Endowment for the Arts. Through cityLAB, Cuff has expanded her studies of infrastructure,  postsuburban Los Angeles, and new formulations of green design, most recently through funded research about the urban design implications of proposed high speed rail. She organized the design ideas competition called WPA 2.0: Working Public Architecture which attracted 400 submissions from students and design professionals around the world in 2009. Dr. Cuff teaches various courses related to the profession of architecture as well as special seminars on cultural issues, architectural theory, and urbanism.