Amy K. Glasmeier is Professor and Head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She recently held the position of professor of Economic Geography and Regional Planning at the Pennsylvania State University. In 2005-2008 she was the John Whisman Scholar of the Appalachian Regional Commission. At Penn State she previously was the director of the Policy Studies Center on Energy, Environment and Development. She is co-editor of Economic Geography. She has written two books on technology and regional development and has helped formulate policies to develop and expand technology industries. She has written two books focused on the special development problems of rural areas and has worked closely with academics and policy makers around the country to fashion programs designed to assist in formulating sustainable development strategies for rural areas. Her book, Manufacturing Time: Global Competition in the World Watch industry, 1750-2000, provides considerable perspective on how different modes of industrial organization and varieties of capitalism yield varying levels of competitive success of national systems of industrialization.

Her most recent book, published fall 2005 by Routledge Press, An Atlas of Poverty in America: One Nation, Pulling Apart 1960-2003 examines the experience of people and places in poverty since the 1960s, looks across the last four decades at poverty in America and recounts the history of poverty policy since the 1940s. Glasmeier has worked all over the world, including Japan, Hong Kong, Latin America, and Europe. She has worked with the OECD, ERVET Emilia Romagna Regional Planning Agency, numerous federal agencies, and international development organizations in constructing development policies to alleviate poverty and promote economic opportunity. Her current work for the Appalachian Regional Commission explores the potential of renewable energy technologies to provide economic opportunity for communities in the region. She also works on measuring economic opportunity and distress.