Ruowen Shen received her doctoral degree from the Askew School of Public Administration and Policy at Florida State University. Her research interests include policy influence in local and regional governance, urban sustainability, and the effects of expanded bike paths on community health. For her dissertation, Governance of Local Sustainability: Network, Environment and Policy,” she used Geographic Information System (GIS) software to conduct a spatial analysis of residential adoption of solar PV.                                                                                                           

Xiaoheng Wang received her doctoral degree from the Department of Public Administration at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research interests include public budgeting and finance, financial management of state and local governments, and survey methods. For her dissertation, Wang gathered data from 100 large American cities to examine the municipal financial condition in the wake of the great recession. Wang has been involved in survey research projects, such as a national survey of local government technology use and a network evaluation study of a public school district.