Senior Policy Researcher; Professor of Policy Analysis, RAND School of Public Policy
Sara Hughes is a senior policy researcher at RAND and a professor of policy analysis at the RAND School of Public Policy. Her research focuses on designing and evaluating solutions to water, climate change, and environmental policy problems from the local to the global. Her recent work focuses on U.S. and global water policy and planning, urban and community resilience, risk management, implementation for systems transformation, and strategic policy partnerships. This includes projects examining the allocation of federal infrastructure funding; state and local environmental policies; drinking water investment and affordability solutions; and the intersection of water and housing policies.
Hughes’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Water Research Foundation, and the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, among others. Her research has been published in journals and textbooks in political science, urban studies, and environmental policy. She has contributed to national and international scientific assessments including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Sixth Assessment Report, the U.S. National Climate Assessment, UNEP's Global Environmental Outlook for Cities, and the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s second State of the Carbon Cycle Report. Her book, Repowering Cities (Cornell University Press, 2019), examines the governance and political dynamics of decarbonization efforts in North American cities. In addition to her concurrent adjunct position at the University of Michigan, Hughes has held appointments at the University of Toronto, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Ph.D. in environmental science & policy, University of California, Santa Barbara
Adjunct Professor, University of Michigan
