Amy Glasmeier

Professor of Economic Geography and Regional Planning, MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning

Amy Glasmeier is a professor of Economic Geography and Regional Planning. Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT. Glasmeier received a Ph.D and Professional Master’s Degree from the University of California. Berkeley. She directs the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning's LRISA, the Lab on Regional Innovation and Spatial Analysis. Glasmeier is a founding editor of the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy, and Society. Glasmeier is the operator of the MIT Living Wage Calculator. In 2020, Glasmeier was the recipient of the endowed professorship given to MIT by the class of 1922.

From 2012 to 2016, she was an occasional professor in Russia at the MIT-Skolkovo Institute of Engineering Science and Technology and taught about energy systems in transition. She co-authored a National Academy Committee Report on Transformative Research in The Geographical Sciences (2018).

She has received several awards, including a professorship at MIT (2020); Senior Fellow, American Association of Geographers (AAG) 2017; The American Association of Geographers 2014 Distinguished Scholarship Award; The Pennsylvania State University Rosemary Schraer Mentoring Award; and The John D. Whisman Appalachian Regional Scholar. She is a board member of The American Geographical Society. Glasmeier is the author or co-author of eight books and 70 peer-reviewed publications.

Her current research includes studying the role of economic conditions and their impact on public health, analyzing the cost of living in urban and rural areas and regions of despair. She currently works with the U.S. Census, Resources for the Future, and the Environmental Defense Fund, examining factors affecting the labor market uptake of workers after retraining in fossil fuel communities. From 2018-2022 she was a co-PI on a four-year $4 million NSF-CRISP project studying energy system resilience and the case of catastrophic failures. She is the lead PI and a semi-finalist in the $1.6 Billion Regional Innovation Engine Competition funded by the National Science to revitalize the U.S. soft goods industry.

Glasmeier communicates with many of the nation’s major employers interested in wages and working conditions for the U.S. workforce. The calculator is regularly cited in national news and receives tens of thousands hit a month on its website.