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Amy Donahue

Associate Professor & Department Head

Dr. Amy K. Donahue is Head of the Department of Public Policy at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Donahue’s research focuses on the productivity of emergency services organizations and on the nature of citizen demand for public safety. She is author of published work about the design, management, and finance of fire departments and other public agencies. She recently returned from Louisiana State University, where she served as the founding director of the Stephenson Disaster Management Institute, a research institute focused on the challenges of managing large disaster responses. For the past five years, Dr. Donahue has served as a technical advisor to the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate, helping to develop research and development programs to meet the technological needs of emergency responders.  From 2002-2004, Dr. Donahue served as Senior Advisor to the Administrator for Homeland Security at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). She was the agency’s liaison to the Department of Homeland Security and the Homeland Security Council and identified opportunities for NASA to contribute to homeland security efforts across government. In 2003, Dr. Donahue spent three months in Texas helping manage the Columbia recovery operation, an intergovernmental response that involved 450 organizations and 25,000 responders. From 2004-2007, Dr. Donahue served on the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, a Congressionally mandated body that advises NASA on safety issues. She also served on the National Mining Associations Mine Safety Training and Technology Commission, tasked with identifying ways to improve safety in the wake of recent miner deaths. Dr. Donahue also has many years of training and field experience in an array of emergency services-related fields, including managing a 911 communications center, and working as a firefighter and emergency medical technician in Fairbanks, Alaska and upstate New York. As a Distinguished Military Graduate of Princeton’s Reserve Officer Training Corps, she served in the U.S. Army on active duty for four years in the 6th Infantry Division, rising to the rank of Captain. Dr. Donahue holds her Ph.D. in Public Administration and her M.P.A. from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.  Her B.A. from Princeton University is in Geological and Geophysical Sciences.