Lawrence Paul Lewis

Lawrence ​“Paul” Lewis is the Program Lead for Community Resilience and Sustainable Development in the Decision and Infrastructure Sciences Division at Argonne National Laboratory.  Paul has supported projects across the U.S. and abroad with actionable analyses and decision support to address challenges at the intersection of infrastructure science, risk management, and emerging technologies. This work seeks to identify single points of system failure, opportunities for closing gaps in coordinated preparedness, and address potential consequences of cascading impacts across interdependent social and physical infrastructure systems. Paul’s efforts have been twice recognized with the Secretary of Energy Achievement Award, the highest honor that can be bestowed by DOE on a national laboratory researcher.

Paul holds a joint appointment at the University of Chicago, where he is a Senior Scientist in the Consortium for Advanced Science and Engineering. He previously served as Lecturer in the Threat and Response Management program at the University of Chicago, where he co-taught the graduate-level foundational course on emergency management policymaking, law, and ethics. Paul studied economics, sociology, law, policy, and engineering at Tulane University, the University of Chicago, and Cornell University.

Major Research Themes

• Dependencies and Interdependencies. Critical infrastructure systems are tightly interconnected, with cross-sector dependencies that create both functional synergies and risk multipliers. Understanding and modeling these relationships is central to advancing resilience, particularly when failures in one system may cascade across others.
• Nonlinear Dynamics. Infrastructure does not respond to disruption in proportionate ways. Feedback loops, tipping points, and emergent behaviors must be accounted for through nonlinear systems theory and complex adaptive systems frameworks.
• Multidisciplinary Frameworks. Infrastructure challenges are socio-technical in nature. Effective solutions require integrating engineering with law, economics, policy, and social science using systems engineering as a platform for interdisciplinary design and evaluation.
• From Assessment to Design. Transitioning from vulnerability assessment to proactive infrastructure design is essential. This includes anticipating interdependent failures, designing modularity and redundancy, and aligning systems with community needs and long-term outcomes.
• Democratized Decision Support. Stakeholder-inclusive tools and participatory planning processes improve equity and implementation. This theme informs development of modeling frameworks, games, and software platforms designed for public use.
• Enduring Outcomes. The research agenda is anchored in long-term outcomes: reducing systemic risk, strengthening resilience, advancing justice, and ensuring sustainability of infrastructure systems.

Research Applications

• Systemic Risk and Security Analysis. Modeling and mitigating cascading failures across sectors.
• Infrastructure Resilience Enhancement. Designing systems with adaptive, redundant, and modular characteristics.
• Sustainable Design and Process. Supporting decarbonization, environmental justice, and long-term viability.
• Community Planning and Urban Design. Integrating infrastructure data into participatory design tools for cities.
• Cyber-Physical Interface. Addressing vulnerabilities and opportunities at the intersection of digital control and physical systems.
• Energy-Water Nexus. Coordinating interdependent lifelines through co-optimization and regional simulation.
• Urban-Rural Connectivity. Bridging service and planning gaps across geographies.
• Civic Data Exchange. Facilitating real-time, equitable data use through secure and user-friendly platforms.
• Post-Disaster Recovery Optimization. Using staged, equity-aware models to guide resource deployment.
• Critical Lifeline Coordination. Supporting real-time, cross-sector emergency and recovery collaboration.

Education

• Ph.D. Student, Systems Engineering, Cornell University (expected 2028)
• M.S., Threat and Response Management, University of Chicago (2011)
• J.D., International and Environmental Law, Tulane University (2008)
• M.A., Comparative Law and History, Tulane University (2006)
• B.A., Sociology and History, Tulane University (2004)

Licensure

• Supreme Court of Illinois (2008 – Present)
• United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (2013 – Present)

Selected Recent Publications

• Hummel, J. R., Schneider, J. L., & Lewis, L. P. (2024). Building resilient cities with integrated resiliency analyses. In Climate-Resilient Cities: Priorities for the GCC Countries. Springer Nature.
• Lewis, L. P., Petit, F. D., et al. (2022). Understanding COVID-19 public health outcomes as a function of systemic risks and community resilience. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.
• Zamuda, C. D., Wall, T. A., Lewis, L. P., et al. (2019). Resilience management practices for electric utilities and extreme weather. The Electricity Journal, 32(9), 1-9.
• Lewis, L. P., & Petit, F. D. (2019). Critical infrastructure interdependency analysis: Operationalizing resilience strategies. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.
• Carrera, J., Graziano, D., & Lewis, L. P. (2018). Protecting the public through advanced supply chain analytics. Phalanx, 51(2), 22-27.