Ann-Margaret Esnard joined FAU's School of Urban and Regional Planning in August 2005 as the Director of the Visual Planning Technology Lab (VPT Lab). Esnard's expertise encompasses disaster planning, hazard and vulnerability assessment, GIS/spatial analysis, and land use planning. She has been involved in a number of related research initiatives, including three NSF funded projects on topics of disaster-induced population displacement, and long-term recovery, and has written on a number of topics that include: population displacement from catastrophic hurricanes, the role of the South Florida Haitian diaspora in assisting earthquake survivors, GIS-based vulnerability assessments of coastal and flood hazards, quality of life and holistic disaster recovery, public participation GIS and GIS education.

Esnard has served on a number of local, state and national committee including: the Steering Committee for Evaluation of the National Flood Insurance Program, the Disasters Roundtable of the National Academy of Sciences; the National Research Council's committee on Private-Public Sector Collaboration to Enhance Community Disaster Resilience, and the State of Florida Post-Disaster Redevelopment Planning initiative.

Esnard holds degrees in Agricultural Engineering (B.Sc., University of the West Indies-Trinidad), Agronomy and Soils (M.S., University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez) and Regional Planning (Ph.D., UMASS-Amherst). She also completed a two year post-doc at UNC-Chapel Hill.