ÑÇÖÞAV

Todd M. La Porte is an associate professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at ÑÇÖÞAV. His current research interests include climate change adaptation policy and governance, organizational and social resiliency.

La Porte has also worked on governance and the use and impacts of networked information technologies, for which he has received National Science Foundation and Pew Foundation support, public attitudes to technology and homeland security, with Department of Homeland Security funding, critical infrastructure protection, and organizational responses to extreme events, such as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. His most recent major publication in this area is as contributor to and coeditor of Seeds of Disaster, Roots of Response: How Private Action Can Reduce Public Vulnerability, with Philip Auerswald, Lewis M. Branscomb, and Erwann Michel-Kerjan (Cambridge University Press, 2006).

La Porte is currently on leave in the Office of Policy, Environmental Protection Agency, working on resilient cities, climate adaptation policy and interagency climate adaptation planning. He is also appointed visiting professor at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, working on societal dimensions of the energy transition.

La Porte teaches courses on climate change adaptation policy; global political economy; critical infrastructures and extreme events; global Internet public policy; technology and institutional change; and culture, organizations and technology.

Before coming to Mason, La Porte was a member of the faculty of technology, policy and management at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, where he was associate professor. From 1989 to 1995, he was an analyst at the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), a research office of the U.S. Congress, where he worked on the role of wireless telecommunications and the National Information Infrastructure, international trade in telecommunications services and U.S. policy, and international defense industrial cooperation and the arms trade.

In addition to his work at OTA, La Porte has published work in public organizational challenges of the web in disaster assistance, on European technology assessment methodologies and practices, and on the social implications of telecommunications mobility.

He received his PhD in political science from Yale University in 1989, and his BA in sociology and political science from Swarthmore College in 1980. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Areas of Research

• Energy Policy
• Environmental Policy
• Public Administration
• Science and Technology Policy
• Climate Change Adaptation
• Energy and Climate Policy