Dr. Glasmeier holds a professional masters and PhD in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. From 2009 to 2013, she was the Department Head of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. She simultaneously serves as a professor of economic geography and regional planning. She has two books on policies to develop and expand technology industries. Her book, Manufacturing Time: Global Competition in the World Watch industry, 1750-2000, provides considerable perspective on how different modes of industrial organization and varieties of capitalism yield varying levels of competitive success of national systems of industrialization.

In addition, she has written two books focused on the special development problems of rural areas and has worked closely with academics and policy makers around the country to fashion programs designed to assist in formulating sustainable development strategies for rural areas. Her most recent book, published fall 2005 by Routledge Press, An Atlas of Poverty in America: One Nation, Pulling Apart 1960-2003 examines the experience of people and places in poverty since the 1960s, looks across the last four decades at poverty in America and recounts the history of poverty policy since the 1940s. She is finishing up a project on the spatial location of wounded soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan. With a Freedom Of Information request, Glasmeier acquired data that allows her to map the location of health care services and the soldiers home of record. She hopes this research will help draw attention to the particular difficulties of soldiers seeking health care while living in rural areas.