about
Welcome to the Sustaining Urban Places Research (SUPR) Lab at Portland State University. SUPR is located within the College of Urban & Public Affairs, and provides research support to faculty, graduate students, and staff within the college and beyond. SUPR is a collaborative space which fosters collaboration, interdisciplinary research, and community engagement. Our projects focus on topics such as healthy urban futures, social/environmental justice, and climate resilience.
people
Affiliated Faculty
Elliott Gall : Assistant Professor, Maseeh College of Engineering & Computer Science
Elliott Gall's research and teaching investigates phenomena in built environments that affect indoor and urban environmental quality. Research and teaching in Dr. Gall's group ultimately seeks to develop new approaches that improve building sustainability through an understanding of the intersection of building energy use, indoor air quality, and occupant well-being. Specific research areas include: i) fundamental laboratory and field studies of indoor air pollutant transport and transformation, ii) air pollution exposure assessment through modeling and personal exposure studies, and iii) evaluation of building technology and design with respect to indoor environmental quality.
Linda George : Professor, School of the Environment
Linda George and her students conduct research about the atmosphere as it relates to human activities. One of her main areas of research involves investigating the impact of the sources of air pollution on air quality at high spatial resolution and chemical speciation. Most regulatory systems for air quality are limited to a handful pollutants monitored at a regional scale. However, the spatial scale of emissions and their impacts can occur at smaller scales, especially in urban settings. She is investigating monitoring and statistical techniques for assessing air quality at the scale relevant to public health. She is also interested in understanding the role of urban systems, such as transportation and land use planning, as they impact air quality. These projects involve collaborations with urban planners, transportation engineers and computer scientists.
Lynn Messer : Associate Professor, School of the Environment
Lynne Messer teaches across the educational spectrum, from undergraduate epidemiology, master’s level women’s health, masters and doctoral health and social inequalities, and doctoral research methods. Her research explores the intersection of social-environmental justice and residential segregation in exacerbating maternal and child health disparities among vulnerable populations. Her early work focused on better characterizing the built and social environments for population-based epidemiologic disparities research. Her later work incorporated other non-social area-level exposures, including air pollution and environmental contaminants, for maternal and child health. In her current work, she seeks to integrate these related environmental factors with research on fetal development and intergenerational transmission to understand the potential for fetal priming to explain the persistence of health disparities among vulnerable subpopulations.
Vivek Shandas : Professor, Toulan School of Urban Studies & Planning and SUPR Lab Founder
Vivek Shandas has interdisciplinary training that spans the social and biophysical sciences. His research interests focus on understanding the dynamics of socio-ecological systems, specifically in cities. Through projects that examine multiple spatial and temporal scales, he aims to characterize, monitor, and model the interactions between humans and the environment. Using qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods, his research aims to engage communities in identifying feedbacks among human behavior, environmental change, and human health and well-being. Notable areas of research include: water use behavior among urban residents; urban vegetation and human health; urban ecosystem services; and participatory mapping.
Elliott Gall's research and teaching investigates phenomena in built environments that affect indoor and urban environmental quality. Research and teaching in Dr. Gall's group ultimately seeks to develop new approaches that improve building sustainability through an understanding of the intersection of building energy use, indoor air quality, and occupant well-being. Specific research areas include: i) fundamental laboratory and field studies of indoor air pollutant transport and transformation, ii) air pollution exposure assessment through modeling and personal exposure studies, and iii) evaluation of building technology and design with respect to indoor environmental quality.
Linda George : Professor, School of the Environment
Linda George and her students conduct research about the atmosphere as it relates to human activities. One of her main areas of research involves investigating the impact of the sources of air pollution on air quality at high spatial resolution and chemical speciation. Most regulatory systems for air quality are limited to a handful pollutants monitored at a regional scale. However, the spatial scale of emissions and their impacts can occur at smaller scales, especially in urban settings. She is investigating monitoring and statistical techniques for assessing air quality at the scale relevant to public health. She is also interested in understanding the role of urban systems, such as transportation and land use planning, as they impact air quality. These projects involve collaborations with urban planners, transportation engineers and computer scientists.
Lynn Messer : Associate Professor, School of the Environment
Lynne Messer teaches across the educational spectrum, from undergraduate epidemiology, master’s level women’s health, masters and doctoral health and social inequalities, and doctoral research methods. Her research explores the intersection of social-environmental justice and residential segregation in exacerbating maternal and child health disparities among vulnerable populations. Her early work focused on better characterizing the built and social environments for population-based epidemiologic disparities research. Her later work incorporated other non-social area-level exposures, including air pollution and environmental contaminants, for maternal and child health. In her current work, she seeks to integrate these related environmental factors with research on fetal development and intergenerational transmission to understand the potential for fetal priming to explain the persistence of health disparities among vulnerable subpopulations.
Vivek Shandas : Professor, Toulan School of Urban Studies & Planning and SUPR Lab Founder
Vivek Shandas has interdisciplinary training that spans the social and biophysical sciences. His research interests focus on understanding the dynamics of socio-ecological systems, specifically in cities. Through projects that examine multiple spatial and temporal scales, he aims to characterize, monitor, and model the interactions between humans and the environment. Using qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods, his research aims to engage communities in identifying feedbacks among human behavior, environmental change, and human health and well-being. Notable areas of research include: water use behavior among urban residents; urban vegetation and human health; urban ecosystem services; and participatory mapping.
Research Fellows
Dana Hellman : PhD student, School of the Environment and NSF Sustainability Research Network Fellow
Yasuyo Makido : Post-Doctoral Researcher, Toulan School of Urban Studies & Planning
Philip Orlando : Master's student, School of the Environment
Meenakshi Rao : Post-Doctoral Researcher, School of the Environment and Air Quality Scientist at Oregon DEQ
Jackson Voelkel : Geospatial Researcher
Joey Williams : Master's student, Toulan School of Urban Studies & Planning
Yasuyo Makido : Post-Doctoral Researcher, Toulan School of Urban Studies & Planning
Philip Orlando : Master's student, School of the Environment
Meenakshi Rao : Post-Doctoral Researcher, School of the Environment and Air Quality Scientist at Oregon DEQ
Jackson Voelkel : Geospatial Researcher
Joey Williams : Master's student, Toulan School of Urban Studies & Planning
Past Researchers
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Carine Arendes, MURP
Amber Ayers, MURP Kara Boden, MURP Stephan Brown, PhD Jeremy Bunn, MS Shavon Caldwell, MURP Cathy Cibor, MURP Ellen Dorsey, MURP Caitlin Francis, MURP Bill Garcia, BS Mandia Gonzales, MURP Ted Hart, PhD Tim Hitchins, MS Chang-Yu Hong, PhD Marissa Matsler, PhD |
Garrett Phillips, MURP
Kelsea Schumacher, PhD Anthony Thompson, MURP Alec Trusty, BS Anandi van Diepen-Hedayat, PhD Darin Wahl, PhD Lizzy Warren, MURP Michael Weisdorf, PhD |