Dr. Cynthia Lum is Distinguished University Professor of Criminology, Law and Society and director of George Mason University’s Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy. She is a leading authority on evidence-based policing, an approach that advocates that research, evaluation, and scientific processes should have “a seat at the table” in law enforcement policymaking and practice. She has studied and written extensively about patrol operations and police crime prevention activities, police technology, investigations and detective work, and evidence-based crime policy. Additionally, she has developed numerous tools and strategies to translate and institutionalize research into everyday law enforcement operations. For her efforts, she received the 2017 inaugural Mason Presidential Medal for Excellence in Social Impact and the 2020 Virginia State Council for Higher Education Outstanding Faculty Award.

Professor Lum is an elected Fellow of the American Society of Criminology. She is an appointed member of the Committee on Law and Justice (CLAJ) for the National Academies of Sciences (NAS), and has served on the NAS’s ad hoc committees on Proactive Policing and Evidence to Advance Reform in the Global Security and Justice Sectors. She is Board Trustee of the Council on Criminal Justice, a Board Director for the National Police Foundation, and has served numerous elected and appointed positions within the American Society of Criminology. She is the founding editor of Translational Criminology Magazine and was the first North American Editor for the Oxford Journal Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice. Dr. Lum is a Fulbright alum and is the co-Founder/Director of the International Summer School for Policing Scholarship, developed with Nick Fyfe at the Scottish Institute for Policing Research and with partners at Arizona State University.

Her book with Christopher Koper, Evidence-Based Policing: Translating Research Into Practice (Oxford University Press), received the American Society of Criminology Division of Policing 2020 Outstanding Book Award. Professors Lum and Koper are the Editors-In-Chief of Criminology and Public Policy, the flagship policy journal of the American Society of Criminology.

Watch: "A Vision for American Policing Reform" GMU Vision Series Lecture by Cynthia Lum