2021 Graduate Certificate, Geographic Information Systems, University of Texas, Arlington
2008 B.A., Architecture, University of Texas, Austin
Laura Messier worked as an architect for ten years with licensure in New York, California, and Texas. Most recently she was an associate at Jensen Architects in San Francisco, where she led several award-winning projects.
Since 2018, she has been deeply engaged with walkability issues in Dallas, Texas. In 2020, she was named a National Institute for Transportation and Communities Scholar, for which she produced a manuscript examining the sidewalk policies of 30 U.S. cities. In 2022, she was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
While in the Population, Health, and Place program, she plans to continue her research of sidewalk policies, with the goal of quantifying the costs of poor sidewalks with respect to poor health, climate, and other impacts, relative to the cost of the infrastructure itself. She also will pursue her broader interest in the way the built environment influences behavior and health, the unequal impact across demographic groups, and the policies and government structures that shape these environments.
