George E. Tita

Biography

George E. Tita, Ph.D., is Professor and Director of the Livable Cities Lab in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine. His research focuses on the spatial and social dimensions of violence, particularly gang-related crime, and the illegal gun market. Tita has developed mathematical and computational models to understand crime patterns, including work on self-exciting point processes for predicting crime events and spatial models of gang territorial dynamics.

Tita has served as principal or co-principal investigator on numerous federally funded research projects, including grants from the National Institute of Justice, National Science Foundation, and Office of Naval Research. His work has examined topics ranging from illegal gun markets in Los Angeles to the application of predictive policing methods through randomized controlled field trials. He has also led evaluations of gang intervention programs and studied the relationship between neighborhood change, housing markets, and violence.

Tita received his Ph.D. in Public Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon University in 1999. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and numerous book chapters on topics including spatial analysis of crime, gang violence, and firearms policy. His research has appeared in journals such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of the American Statistical Association, and Criminology. He previously served as Director of the Master of Public Policy Program at UCI from 2011 to 2020.

Education

• Ph.D. in Public Policy and Management, Carnegie Mellon University, 1999
• M.S. in Public Policy and Management, Carnegie Mellon University, 1993
• B.A. in History and Russian Eastern European Studies, minor in Economics, University of Pittsburgh, 1986

Distinctions

• Affiliate of the University of Chicago, Crime Lab, 2013
• Donald Robertson Prize Essay Award, Urban Studies, 2004
• Research Partner Award, Department of Justice, BATF, 2005
• Award 3rd Place in ASC's Gene Carte Student Paper Competition, 1997
• Finalist for the American Sociology Association Division of Crime, Law and Deviance Student Paper Award, 1997
• William W. Cooper Dissertation Award, Carnegie Mellon University, 1999
• University of California Irvine Social Ecology Senate Faculty Teaching Award, 2004
• University of California Irvine, Campus Junior Faculty Teaching Award, 2004
• Otto Davis Award for Social Justice, 1998