Todd Schenk

Todd Schenk is an Associate Professor in the Urban & Environmental Policy & Planning Program. He is also the Director of the Science, Technology & Engineering in Policy (STEP) program. He has extensive research and consulting experience working on environmental policy and planning, and collaborative governance issues in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. 

Dr. Schenk’s research interests include collaborative governance at the science-policy interface, environmental policy and planning, serious games for action research, and civil discourse to build empathy and understanding. He has worked on projects across multiple sectors, including water quality, invasive and endangered species, antimicrobial resistance, climate change adaptation, and renewable energy. This work has been supported by multiple sources, including via four National Science Foundation grants.

Schenk authored the book Adapting Infrastructure to Climate Change: Advancing decision-making under conditions of uncertainty and complexity (2018), co-edited Joint Fact Finding in Urban Planning and Environmental Disputes (2017), and has (co)authored over 40 journal articles and book chapters.

Dr. Schenk received both a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Planning and a Master in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a bachelor’s degree in Geography from the University of Guelph. He served as the Assistant Director of the MIT Science Impact Collaborative and held a research fellowship with the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. Dr. Schenk has also held positions with the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe and the Consensus Building Institute.

Areas of expertise

• Science-Policy Boundary Work (STEP Program) 
• Collaborative Governance
• Environmental Policy & Planning
  
• Serious Games
  
• Climate Change Adaptation
• Invasive and Endangered Species
• Water Quality
• Civil Discourse