Elizabeth Deakin’s research focuses on transportation and land use policy and the environmental impacts of transportation. She has published over 200 articles, book chapters, and reports on transportation and urban development policies, planning strategies, and their environmental consequences, She is currently conducting a project on sustainable urban development and sustainable transportation for Chinese cities, funded by the China Energy Foundation. She also is working with the California High Speed Rail Authority on station area development and design concepts. Other recent studies investigate the prospects for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from transportation in Latin American cities, and international comparisons of transportation and sustainable development policies.

Deakin has testified before committees of both the US House of Representatives and the Senate as well as for several California Assembly and Senate committees. .She served as chair of the Congressionally-mandated National Academy of Sciences’ Advisory Board on Surface Transportation-Environmental Research, whose eport led to the establishment of a major transportation-environmental research program funded by Congress. She has been active in a number of government posts including city and county transportation commissions and state advisory boards.She is an editor of Transportation Policy and serves on the advisory board of several other journals. Formerly, she served as the Director of the UC Transportation Center (1999-2009) and as Co-Director of the Global Metropolitan Studies Center (2005-2008).

Deakin holds degrees in transportation systems analysis and political science from MIT as well as a law degree from Boston College.