Sue-Ming Yang

How long have you been at George Mason University and what was your path like to get here?

This is my 11th year at George Mason, yet it feels like just yesterday that I arrived. I have held several positions in the past. My first academic appointment was at Georgia State University, followed by an academic position in Taiwan. I left a tenured position to come to George Mason, so it is fair to say that I chose George Mason because I believed it was the right place for me to develop my research.

Can you share a little bit about your current research?

My research program broadly focuses on crime and place, policing and behavioral health, simulation and virtual reality, officer decision-making and wellness, and terrorism studies. Much of my current work examines how research and emerging technologies can improve decision-making and responses to complex public-safety problems.

A major area of my research focuses on police and community responses to mental health crises. I have led and collaborated on several multisite projects with law enforcement agencies and community partners evaluating crisis intervention training, co-response models, dispatcher and clinician decision-making, place-based mental health interventions, and officer wellness. This work draws on longitudinal administrative and spatial data, randomized experiments, surveys, and qualitative interviews to understand not only whether these interventions work, but also how they are implemented and how crisis-response systems can be improved.

More recently, I have expanded my experimental research through the newly founded Applied Simulation & AI for Public Safety (ASAP) Lab, using immersive virtual reality and simulation to study public-safety decision-making. My earlier VR research examined officers’ use-of-force decisions and how situational and individual characteristics influence decisions to draw or use a firearm. My current work extends this approach to de-escalation and behavioral-health crisis response, using immersive, experimentally controlled scenarios to examine communication, threat assessment, decision-making, and intervention strategies. This work also explores how simulation, AI, and behavioral and physiological measures can be integrated to improve the measurement and evaluation of public-safety performance.

I also maintain active research programs in survey methodology and terrorism. My survey research examines how questionnaire design influences reported fear of crime, using a comprehensive meta-analytic dataset of studies published since the late 1970s. My terrorism research examines ideology, government responses to political violence, and the dynamics of terrorist activity, including an ongoing project examining the decline and desistance of terrorism in Sri Lanka. Across these areas, a common theme in my work is the use of innovative methods and multiple forms of evidence—including field and laboratory experiments, immersive simulation, spatial and longitudinal analysis, program evaluation, surveys, and qualitative methods—to address consequential questions about criminal justice and public safety.

What do you like most about working with graduate students?

Working with motivated students is a great deal of fun. Mentoring is often a two-way street: I guide students in conducting research, cultivating perspectives, and building relationships with practitioner collaborators. At the same time, I learn from my students and am inspired by their insightful questions and inquisitive minds.

What skills or experiences can students gain while working with you?

I work on several projects that employ a variety of research methods, including experimental research, longitudinal analysis, program evaluation, survey methodologies, and qualitative approaches. Most of the time, I focus on original research, but I also work extensively with data from criminal justice agencies, which provides excellent opportunities for secondary data analysis.

Students who have worked with me in the past have gained experience in data collection and processing (both quantitative and qualitative), data analysis across multiple data types, designing experimental research, developing surveys, and building relationships with practitioners. These are highly valuable skills. One of my former students secured a position at the Urban Institute upon completing her M.A. – a rare achievement. She told me the offer came before graduation because of her extensive research experience with data and her collaboration with practitioners while working on our BJA-sponsored grant.

I involve students in various stages of the research process so they can learn it firsthand. I also emphasize training students to be critical thinkers and independent scholars by cultivating their ability to see the big picture while remaining attentive to detail.

What graduate classes do you teach?

I regularly teach CRIM 783: Stats II. I have also taught other special topic courses like urban disorder and crime perception.