Dr. Janice E. Perlman is University Professor of Comparative Urban Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. She is also President of the Mega-Cities Project, Inc., a non-profit network of collaboration among the world's largest cities, which she founded in 1986, after giving up her tenure in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California at Berkeley. She holds a B.A. from Cornell University in Anthropology and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Political Science.

Her book, The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro, received the C. Wright Mills Award in 1976 for the year's most outstanding contribution to public policy for social problems and is widely used around the world by students and scholars of urbanization. Her many other publications include "Grassrooting the System," which has been reprinted in over 40 publications, and "Misconceptions About the Urban Poor and the Dynamics of Housing Policy Evolution," which won the Chester Rapkin Award in 1988.

Her experience in urban development includes serving as Coordinator of President Carter's Neighborhood Task Force on Urban Policy; Advisor to the World Bank Urban Projects Department; Executive Director of Strategic Planning for the New York City Partnership; Director of Science, Technology and Public Policy at the New York Academy of Sciences; and consultant to various non-profit and governmental organizations in the USA and abroad, including the group for Integrated Urban Development of Havana, Cuba.

Dr. Perlman is a Fulbright Scholar for 2000-2001, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Overseas Development Council, and serves on the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, and various boards including the U.S. Advisory Committee for Habitat.