About Lauren
Welcome! I am a researcher, economist, data geek, baker, dog mom, and Assistant Professor at Colorado State University. I study food retail markets and how market structure impacts consumer food decisions. Through projects like DemocratizingData.ai, I work to make information more transparent, equitable, and built to serve the public good. See my CV for more details.
Short Bio
Lauren Chenarides is an Assistant Professor at Colorado State University in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics. Her research focuses on how food retail markets and consumer food decisions interact and contribute to economic outcomes across communities. She also studies the role of data infrastructure in supporting evidence-based food policy, including efforts to increase transparency and public access to high-quality datasets through initiatives like DemocratizingData.ai. Lauren has expertise in applied microeconomics, industrial organization, spatial analysis, scanner data, and food systems research. She regularly works with large-scale retail and household datasets and collaborates with interdisciplinary teams on policy-relevant research. She holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from Penn State and a B.A. in Mathematics from the College of the Holy Cross.