Emma Mehlig French

Researcher

Emma French is a doctoral student in Urban Planning and a Graduate Student Researcher with the Luskin Center for Innovation. Emma’s research interests center around environmental justice, participatory planning and community-based climate change mitigation and adaptation. Through her work at LCI Emma is helping evaluate the first round of the Transformative Climate Communities Program, a unique place-based initiative aimed at reducing local greenhouse gas emissions and improving equity and public health in some of California’s most vulnerable communities.

Prior to coming to UCLA, Emma was a Research Scientist at the Center for Urban Innovation at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she helped launch the Smart Cities and Inclusive Innovation Initiative. In 2016, Emma received a Smart Cities Fellowship, which she used to help fund independent research on the role of smart city technologies in participatory environmental planning in West Atlanta. Emma has co-authored several articles and a book chapter, covering a range of topics including open government data, sustainability networks and food trucks. Emma received a Master’s of City and Regional Planning and a MSc in Public Policy from Georgia Tech, and a BA in Environmental Analysis from Pitzer College.