MSRED - Meet our Faculty

Some of our instructors are industry professionals with long experience in real estate development and a love of teaching.  Others are academic faculty members  devoted to exploring architecture and planning for urban development.  Together, they provide wide-ranging, innovative education for the industry’s direct needs and for its roles in urban affairs.

  • John P. Amershadian
    11/22/22
    John P. Amershadian is retired Senior Counsel and former Managing Partner of, Hodgson Russ, LLP, Buffalo’s oldest and largest law firm. During his over forty years of practice he concentrated in transactional real estate and  finance work, including serving as the lead attorney for both borrowers and banking syndicates in multi-lender financings and representing lenders and developers in construction and permanent mortgage financings. He has also played a number of roles in various types of asset-backed securitizations.
  • Paul Battaglia
    2/22/24
    Paul is a Buffalo native who received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been in full-time architectural practice since 1976 working on many of the more significant historic projects in Buffalo.
  • Stephen Fitzmaurice
    9/12/18
    Stephen Fitzmaurice has over 30 years of experience running commercial buildings ranging in size from 300,000 square feet to over 1.5 million square feet. 
  • Hiroaki Hata
    2/22/24
    Associate Professor Hiroaki Hata’s research and creative work focuses on the design, history, theory and criticism of urban structures and community development.
  • Christopher J. Hogan, P.E.
    9/12/18
    Christopher Hogan is the Chief Operating Officer of RP Oak Hill Building Company Inc., an employee-owned construction management and general contracting firm that has built over $800 million in projects in Western New York over the last decade.
  • V. Jeffrey LiPuma
    11/22/22
    Mr. LiPuma is an adjunct instructor and Senior Fellow in the UB Real Estate Development Program. He is the former Managing Director of CBRE-Buffalo, a full service commercial real estate service provider. CBRE is the world’s largest provider of commercial real estate services. Prior to the association with CBRE-Buffalo, LiPuma was a principal with Comvest Consulting, Inc., a Western New York commercial real estate firm established in 1981.
  • Kate Nelischer
    2/22/24
    Kate Nelischer joined the School of Architecture and Planning in 2022 as assistant professor of urban planning, bringing research and teaching experience that will foster connections across real estate development and urban planning in the study of smart cities and planning and development governance.
  • Matthew Roland, AICP
    2/1/22
    Matthew Roland, AICP, joins the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning as an Assistant Dean for the Real Estate Development program and Clinical Assistant Professor. He has a Bachelor of Science in Urban Studies from Cornell University and a Master of Regional Planning with specializations in land use, real estate and economic development from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
  • Ernest Sternberg
    9/12/18
    Prof. Sternberg was the founding director of the MSRED program. He is a professor in the Department of Urban and Regional planning at UB and served for nine years as chair of that department.
  • Mike Tunkey, AIA
    12/21/20
    Mike Tunkey is a Principal with CannonDesign.  In his over 20 years at CannonDesign, he has contributed to the growth of the firm through active design, operational and client leadership roles.