Dr. Cynthia Lum is Professor of Criminology, Law and Society and Director the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at George Mason University. She graduated Downey High School in 1992. She holds Bachelor of Arts degrees in Political Science and Economics from UCLA, a Masters of Science in Criminology from the London School of Economics, and a Ph.D. in Criminology from the University of Maryland. Her areas of expertise include policing, evidence-based crime policy, crime prevention, police technologies, and translation criminology.
Her research has impacted many law enforcement agencies at the international, federal, state, and local levels, as she has evaluated police practices and has created tools to translate them into practice. Dr. Lum is a former police officer and detective with the Baltimore City Police Department. Currently, she is an appointed member of the Committee on Law and Justice (CLAJ) for the National Academics of Sciences (NAS), and has also served on the NAS’s Committee on Proactive Policing as well as its Standing Committee on Traffic Law Enforcement.
She is a member of the National Police Foundation Advisory Board, the Research Advisory Committee of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the Misdemeanor Justice Project (John Jay College of Criminal Justice), and an Executive Counselor for the American Society of Criminology.
She is the founding editor of the Translational Criminology Magazine and served as the first North American Editor for the Oxford Journal Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice. She is currently Chief Editor of Criminology & Public Policy, the flagship policy journal of the American Society of Criminology.
Dr. Lum is a Fulbright Specialist in policing and criminology and is the co-Director of the International Summer School for Policing Scholarship. She is a fellow of the Academy of Experimental Criminology, a recipient of the U.S. Attorney General’s (2011) Citizen Volunteer Service Award, and has received the Scottish Police Service James Smart Memorial Medal. For her efforts, she was awarded the inaugural George Mason University Williams Presidential Medal for Excellence in Social Impact.