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Research Centers & Affiliated Research

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UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation

The UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation (LCI) advances equitable environmental solutions through research, mentoring, and community partnerships. Focused on critical issues like climate change and the right to clean water, LCI collaborates with students, civic partners, and policymakers to develop actionable, evidence-based policies. Their work has shaped numerous policies, earning national recognition. LCI is committed to innovation, action, and justice in addressing environmental challenges and inequality.

Co-Executive Director: Gregory Pierce
Co-Executive Director: Colleen Callahan

The Ralph and Goldy Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies

The Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies was established in 1988 to promote the study, understanding and solution of regional policy issues, with special reference to Southern California, including problems of the environment, urban design, housing, community and neighborhood dynamics, transportation and economic development. The center’s interdisciplinary activities involve faculty members and graduate students from many schools and departments at UCLA. It also fosters links with researchers at other California universities and research institutes on issues of relevance to regional  policy.

Director: Michael Lens

UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy

The UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy advances radical democracy in an unequal world through research, critical thought, and alliances with social movements and racial justice activism. We analyze and transform the divides and dispossessions of our times, in the university and in our cities, across global South and global North.

Director: Martin Gilens

Institute of Transportation Studies

UCLA’s Institute of Transportation Studies is one of the leading transportation policy research centers in the U.S. The ITS works closely with and is generously funded by two organizations: the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and the University of California Transportation Center  (UCTC). Each year dozens of ITS faculty,  students and research staff collaborate on a wide array of transportation policy and planning studies, ranging from an analysis of the travel trends and transportation needs of immigrants and low-income workers, to the testing and evaluation of innovative fare programs to increase public transit use.

Director: Adam Millard-Ball

Center for Neighborhood Knowledge

The mission of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge (CNK) is to conduct basic and applied research on the socioeconomic formation and internal dynamics of neighborhoods, and how these collective spatial units are positioned and embedded in the Southern California region. The CNK emphasizes the study of diversity, differences and disparities among neighborhoods, and explicitly covers immigrant enclaves and minority communities. CNK examines neighborhoods through multi-disciplinary lenses and through collaboration with community partners. Equally important, CNK is dedicated to translating its finding into actionable neighborhood-related policies and programs and to contributing to positive social change. 

Director: Paul Ong

UCLA Agile Visual Analytics Lab

The UCLA Agile Visual Analytics Lab (AVAL) empowers national, state, and local stakeholders to use data to make more timely and sound decisions impacting children, families, communities, and the workforces that serve them. The lab accomplishes that mission by 1) putting vital information into the hands of stakeholders in the form of data visualizations that efficiently and effectively meet their diverse and dynamic information needs, 2) implementing utilization-focused and developmental evaluation of programs and policies of mission-driven organizations and systems, 3) building the capacity of systems and organizations to grow, use, and sustain data ecosystems.

Faculty Co-Founder: Todd Franke
Co-Founder and Director: Robert Blagg

Center for Policy Research on Aging

Established in 1997, the Center for Policy Research on Aging studies the major policy issues affecting our aging society including Social Security, Medicare, long-term care and the societal implications that accompany the aging of the baby boom generation and its parents. In recognition of the growing diversity of the elderly population, CPRA focuses special attention on policy issues as they affect Latino, African-American, Asian and other ethnic populations. As a national, state and local resource center on aging policy, CPRA conducts research, fosters multidisciplinary collaboration among UCLA faculty, and works closely with policymakers, service providers and community groups in meeting the challenges of an aging society.

Director: Fernando Torres-Gil

Latino Policy and Politics Institute

The UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute addresses the most critical domestic policy challenges facing Latinos and other communities of color through research, advocacy, mobilization and leadership development to propel policy reforms that expand genuine opportunity for all Americans. UCLA LPPI is built around a belief that there is no American agenda without a Latino agenda, envisioning policymaking that centers on the needs of Latinos and communities of color to operationalize dignity and opportunity.

Faculty Director: Amada Armenta

UCLA Voting Rights Project

The UCLA Voting Rights Project (VRP) is an interdisciplinary center dedicated to promoting equitable voting access. It provides hands-on training to future lawyers, social scientists, and public policy leaders while addressing gaps in voting rights through litigation, advocacy, and research. VRP focuses on underserved communities, tackling barriers to voting and advancing policies for greater representation. With a commitment to impact litigation and academic research, VRP strives to create lasting change in local, disenfranchised communities across the nation.

Faculty Director: Matt A. Barreto
Director of Litigation: Chad W. Dunn

Los Angeles Education Research Institute

The Los Angeles Education Research Institute (LAERI) advances educational equity and improvement in Los Angeles by bringing researchers and practitioners together to address important educational challenges. We cultivate and maintain a shared research and partnership infrastructure that facilitates new empirical projects and builds connections among academics, practitioners and policymakers. Our research-to-practice model emphasizes the importance of locally developed research questions; sustained collaboration and communication; and cumulative projects that build toward solutions.

Co-Founder and Faculty Director: Meredith Phillips

Berggruen Governance Index

The Berggruen Governance Index evaluates countries on the basis of their quality of political governance. To do this, the Index disaggregates governance into three key components: Quality of Democracy (Inputs), Quality of Government (Throughputs) and Quality of Life (Outputs). By disaggregating the capacities of governance, the Index attempts to deepen understanding of the relationship between the democratic feedback, government competence and the provision of public goods.

Founder and Principal Investigator: Helmut K. Anheier

Faculty Leaders at UCLA and Elsewhere

Faculty members associated with the Luskin School of Public Affairs also hold leadership roles and engage in scholarly collaborations with faculty colleagues on a cross-disciplinary basis at centers, institutes and other academic entities based elsewhere at UCLA or in partnership with community organizations.

Directors:

Other roles:

Affiliated Research Entities

California Policy Lab
The mission of the California Policy Lab is to partner with California’s state and local governments to generate scientific evidence that solves California’s most urgent problems, including homelessness, poverty, crime and education inequality. CPL facilitates close partnerships between policymakers and researchers at UCLA and UC Berkeley to help evaluate and improve public programs through empirical research and technical assistance. Projects at the California Policy Lab are guided by the problems that government partners wish to solve, with relevant empirical analysis that moves at the speed of policymaking.

Faculty Director: Till von Wachter

Center for Health Policy Research
The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research is one of the nation’s leading health policy research centers and the premier source of health policy information for California. Established in 1994, the Center improves the public’s health by advancing health policy through research, public service, community partnership and education. The Center is based in the School of Public Health and affiliated with UCLA Luskin.

Director: Ninez A. Ponce

UCLA Pritzker Center for Strengthening Children and Families
The Center serves as a collaborative hub for prevention and intervention efforts, working to strengthen families to prevent children from entering the child welfare system. It will also aim to build the capacity of foster parents, relative caregivers and adoptive families to promote stable and nurturing families, equitable opportunities and paths to educational success.

Co-Directors: Tyrone Howard, Audra Langley
Faculty Leader: Todd Franke

Southern California HIV/AIDS Policy Research Center
The Southern California HIV/AIDS Policy Research Center brings together the most relevant and timely evidence to bear on HIV/AIDS policymaking in order to further California’s efforts to develop and maintain efficient, cost-effective, and accessible programs and services to people with or at risk for HIV/AIDS.

Director: Ian Holloway

The Williams Institute
The Williams Institute advances sexual orientation law and public policy through rigorous, independent research and scholarship, and disseminates it to judges, legislators, policymakers, media and the public. A national think tank at UCLA Law, the Williams Institute produces high-quality research with real-world relevance.

Founding Executive Director: Brad Sears

Institute of the Environment and Sustainability
Through its local, national and international programs, the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability employs innovative, cross-disciplinary approaches to address critical environmental challenges — including those related to climate change, water quality, air pollution, biodiversity and sustainability — with the goal of achieving stable human coexistence with the natural systems on which society depends.

Director: Marilyn Raphael

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