The school houses a number of research centers where faculty members from across campus pursue issues of mutual interest. In addition to their focus on practical policy problems, the research centers also offer opportunities for student financial aid in the form of research assistant positions, grants, and fellowships.
The Institute on Inequality and Democracy, organized in 2016, advances radical democracy in an unequal world through research, critical thought, and alliances with social movements and racial justice activism. Institute programs and projects convene multiple disciplines, narrative forms, and styles of scholarship and practice, while focusing on four research priorities: housing justice, predatory financialization, policing and incarceration, and decolonizing the university. The Institute aims to analyze and transform the divides and dispossessions of our times, in the university and in our cities, across the global south and global north.
The Luskin Center for Innovation (LCI) conducts rigorous research and timely outreach that informs environmental policies for the health of people and the planet. Center faculty, staff, and graduate student researchers evaluate existing and proposed environmental policies to assess their effectiveness, equity impacts, and potential to spur innovation. The center then shares research findings with community leaders and policymakers, who use LCI research to design evidence-based environmental policies. The center often focuses on California, the world’s fifth-largest economy, to support a model of environmental leadership that is relevant globally. Research programs include climate, energy, environmental equity, transportation, urban greening, and water—all linked by the theme of informing effective and equitable solutions to the environmental challenges of our time.
The Latino Policy and Politics Initiative (LPPI) is a comprehensive think tank that addresses the most critical domestic policy challenges facing Latinos and other communities of color in states and localities across the U.S. The initiative leverages UCLA’s cross-disciplinary strengths to create an enterprise-wide home for Latino social policy with expertise in over a dozen issue areas including civil rights, criminal justice, educational equity, health access, and voting and civic participation. The initiative fosters innovative research, leverages policy-relevant expertise, drives civic engagement, and nurtures a leadership pipeline to propel viable policy reforms that expand opportunity for all Americans.
The Center for Policy Research on Aging (CPRA) was formed to address the significant issues of an aging society through policy analysis, dissemination of information, and technical assistance to the public and private sectors. The demographic challenges of a nation growing older and living longer force society to confront the roles of government and the private sector in serving the increasing number of elderly and their families. The center’s mission is to conduct research; inform policymakers; link communities to local, state, and federal governments; and foster collaboration among UCLA faculty members.
The Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies was founded in 1989, with a $5 million endowment from Ralph and Goldy Lewis, to promote the multidisciplinary study, understanding, and solution of regional policy issues in California. Research projects cover welfare reform, housing, immigration, environment, health insurance, labor and employment, and transportation—with a specific interest on the policy impact on vulnerable populations as a through line.
The UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS), one of the leading transportation policy research centers in the U.S., was created in 1992 to conduct research and furnish professional education on the social, economic, environmental, and cultural aspects of transportation policy. Each year ITS faculty members, students, and research staff collaborate on a wide array of transportation policy and planning studies, ranging from an analysis of the travel trends and transportation needs of immigrants and low-income workers to the testing and evaluation of innovative fare programs to increase public transit use.
