- Mengqiu Cao
- Lorenzo Ceccon
- Frank Chuang
- Yang Liang
- Zhicheng Liu
- Jinghong Lyu
- Zhifu Mi
- Annalisa Rollandi
- Fred C. Sanders
- Yan Song
- Yang Song
- Juan Yan
- Tianren Yang
- Pengcheng Zeng
- Yongping Zhang
- Mengqiu Cao
Senior Lecturer, School of Architecture and Cities, University of Westminster, London, UK
Mengqiu Cao (FRGS, FRSS, FRSA, FHEA) is a Senior Lecturer in Transport, Logistics and Urban Planning at the School of Architecture and Cities, University of Westminster. He was awarded his PhD from the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. Moreover, he has worked in academia and industry in an interdisciplinary research field, which is primarily a mixture of transport analysis and urban studies. In addition, he has also worked with public authorities and international funding organisations. He has been selected as the UK Ambassador for the Association of European Transport. Mengqiu’s current research interests include urban and transport planning; travel vulnerability and social equity; statistics and transport modelling; and sustainable cities. He was awarded the First Prize for the best paper at the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Annual Conference (Transport Geography Research Group-sponsored prize). His work has been published in Urban Studies, Environment and Planning A, Cities, Journal of Transport Geography, and Transport Policy, etc. In addition, his co-authored book titled Transport Economics Matters: Applying Economic Principles to Transportation in Great Britain has been published by Brown Walker Press.
- Lorenzo Ceccon
PhD candidate, School of Architecture, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy
Multidisciplinarity best describes Lorenzo’s knowledge path. After classical studies, he trained and worked as a lawyer, holding an MBA to better combine the fields of law and economics. Following the passion and interests for architecture and urban planning, he graduated from Politecnico di Milano in architecture, then following a PhD research path in urban planning. Within this framework, he had the chance to study and work in his home country Italy and abroad, and to be an alumnus of different Universities, including Università degli Studi di Milano (IT), Sheffield Hallam University (UK), Sankt Gallen University (CH), Bauhaus Universität Weimar (DE) and Politecnico di Milano (IT), where he has also been teaching in different courses mostly linked to computational design and digital representation of architecture and urban space.
Lorenzo’s current main research interests sits at the crossroad between computational design and the field of architecture and urban planning, especially as regards the use of predictive modelling based on digital data – data and knowledge bases – also through AI and agent-based modelling. Focus both on the architectural field, BIM and H-BIM model fitting and predictive features, and urban planning themes, especially Digital Twin and relational space and the impact thereon by converging technologies such as 5G, IoT and AI.
He is currently participating to an inter-departmental project at Politecnico di Milano, with industrial partners, including Vodafone and other hi-tech companies, on the impact of 5G on future urban life (https://www.base5g.polimi.it/). He is also member of the Scientific Committee of CHNT, an Icomos-Austria led International Conference about New Technologies for Cultural Heritage (https://www.chnt.at/), and member of the Organizing Committee of IMG21, a multidisciplinary International Conference around the relationship between images and knowledge-making (http://www.img-network.it/conference-2021/).
- Frank Chuang
PhD candidate, the Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London, London, UK
Frank Chuang is current studying a PhD at University College London. His research interests are mainly about sustainable development and urban data science. His research papers have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS) and covered by the World Economic Forum.
- Yang Liang
PhD candidate, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Polytechnic University of Milan, Milan, Italy
Yang Liang is a PhD candidate in Urban Planning, Design and Policy at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Polytechnic University of Milan. Yang Liang’s current research interest lies in exploring an approach with integrated urban big data to study the correlation of walkability and urban vitality. In another word, her PhD project aims to probe to what extent can walkability-related built environment attributes contribute to urban vitality, through mining, integrating and analyzing multiple sources of urban big data (e.g., GIS, Street view data, POI data, pedestrian trajectory, and social media data). The result of the project is expected to provide references for future urban design practice. Before the PhD career, she obtained her Master’s Degree at the College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, China, and her Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture at Shanghai Jiaotong University. She engaged in several cultural architecture design practices, international joint design programs, and exchange projects during her academic career.
- Zhicheng Liu
PhD candidate, Department of Civil Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, University College London, London, UK
Zhicheng Liu’s research interests mainly focused on low-carbon and energy-saving green building materials, organic-inorganic composite functional materials, solid waste disposal and resource utilization. He is also the executive minister of the Department of Academic Science and Technology (26th CSSA-UK) and the secretary general of the British Alumni Association of Nanjing Tech University. In recent years, he has participated in 1 State Science and Technology Support Project and 4 State Key Laboratory Projects, applied for 5 patents and published 15 papers.
- Jinghong Lyu
Intelligent Mobility Analyst for BloombergNEF, Beijing, China
Jinghong Lyu is an Intelligent Mobility Analyst for BloombergNEF in Beijing. She produces research on business, technologies and policies related to mobility-as-a-service and autonomous driving in China. Jinghong holds a Master’s Degree in City Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Master’s Degree in Smart Cities and Urban Analytics from University College London and Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Sciences from Fudan University.
- Zhifu Mi
Associate Professor , Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, University College London, London, UK
Dr. Zhifu Mi is an Associate Professor at The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, University College London (UCL). His research focuses on climate change economics and energy policy. He has published papers in leading journals, such as Science Advances, Nature Energy, Nature Geoscience, Nature Food, and Nature Sustainability. He currently leads the project on Uncertainty Analysis of Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) funded by The Royal Society. He was awarded the 2018 World Sustainability Award for his leading research in the methodological developments and applications of carbon footprint. He was also named in the Forbes ‘30 Under 30’ Europe in recognition of his innovative research in the economics of climate change. In addition, his research was awarded the 2018 Top 50 Earth and Planetary Sciences Articles in Nature Communications, 2017 Best Early Career Articles in Environmental Research Letters, and 2016 Highly Cited Original Papers in Applied Energy. He is a Co-Editor-in-Chief of Structural Change and Economic Dynamics (IF=2.023) and an Executive Editor of Journal of Cleaner Production (IF=7.246).
- Annalisa Rollandi
PhD candidate, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Polytechnic University of Milan, Milan, Italy
Annalisa Rollandi is a Ph.D. candidate in Urban Planning, Design, and Policy. Her research activity is carried out at DAStU Department of Polytechnic University of Milan (IT) and Institute of Earth Sciences in University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (CH).
Annalisa’s current main research is to create a conceptual model to increase involvement in participatory planning processes with the simulation tools. The case study deals with the cross-border region between the Lombardy Region (IT) and Canton Ticino (CH). At the Institute of Earth Sciences, she participates in a project to identify heat islands in Canton Ticino and evaluate actions to mitigate them.
Currently, she is a member of the Association for Borderlands Studies (ABS), an international association dedicated to the systematic interchange of ideas and information relating to international borders and frontier areas.
Before the Ph.D., she worked in architectural firms and a transport engineering company in Milan. She has worked on urban projects, urban traffic, and mobility plans, transport studies on an urban and territorial scale, traffic survey campaigns, and studies on urban logistics within a European project.
Following her interest in communication, she has followed a specialization course for communication on social media platforms in recent years. At the Polytechnic University of Milan, she obtained a Master’s Degree in Urban Planning and Territorial Policies and a Bachelor’s Degree in Urban Planning. During her studies, she undertook some internships in architectural firms and research laboratories, where she was involved in drafting Territory Government Plans and Urban Redevelopment Projects.
- Fred C. Sanders
Freelance researcher and lecturer at Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands
Sustainable action of citizens has always been my concern. The questions are how citizens can overcome the social stress of cities, help each other to take advancement of labour opportunities, how can they give foundation for sustainable cities and seek societal responsibility. That drives me into research, into workshops and lectures to involve other into this important topic of nowadays. My personal interest has grown during my working period as an Urbanist in sustainable city development for government, into social housing management being a Civil engineer, and by doing my PhD years at the architecture department both at Delft University of Technology. For my MBA and post MBA years I studied at Dutch Erasmus University and IMD Lausanne learning how to reach targets with others. That made me the messenger and the researcher that I am today, giving freelance lectures at several universities, being interim at TSM Business School in the Netherlands and the ‘The Hague’ University of Applied Science in the past years. I prove that starting a scientific carrier doesn’t matter age. I was asked to start my PhD at fifty and since I defended my dissertation in 2014 I visited several congresses and published numerous contributions to the topics of sustainable and smart cities, circularity and resilience, for what I visited universities in Europe, the Russian hemisphere and in Asia. Actual I am captain of the Dutch H2020 Marie Curie ‘SOS Climate Waterfront’, enthusiastic partner of City+ events and editor or Ierek. If you need me parttime or for support of your scientific events, ask for me and we make it happen. Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frederik_Christian_Sanders – Email: fsadvies@gmail.com – ORCID: 0000-0003-1180-4656.
- Yan Song
PhD candidate, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands
Yan Song is a PhD candidate in Environmental Technology and Design at Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology. He graduated at Tongji University (Master of Landscape Architecture) and Ruhr University Bochum (Urban and Regional Planning). His current research focuses on urban metabolism assessment, circular economy, and urban strategic planning. His work has been published in Regional Statistics, EUROPA XXI, Chinese Landscape Architecture, and Southern Architecture. In addition, his research is part of the European Union Horizon 2020 Research project REPAiR (REsource Management in Peri-urban AReas: Going Beyond Urban Metabolism).
- Yang Song
Postdoctoral researcher, School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
Yang Song is a geographer currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at Zhejiang University, China. He received his PhD in Human Geography from King’s College London in November 2019. In his doctoral thesis, Yang conceptualises the translocality of contemporary urbanism through exploring the production of border-crossing, time-overlapping spaces of urban migrant households. Yang’s current research interests centre around the restructuring of socio-spatial landscapes, the interaction of space and power, and the critique of capital-driven urban development. Yang published his research in British Journal of Industrial Relations, The Canadian Geographer, City & Community, and Critical Sociology. Yang also writes popular science articles for The Paper and Urban China.
- Juan Yan
PhD, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands
Juan Yan has received her Doctoral degree from Delft University of Technology. Her academic work focuses on housing distribution, sustainable city, public governance, and policy evaluation. Juan Yan’s research has been published in leading academic journals such as Housing Studies (top-tier in housing field), Habitat International, Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, Land, and Urban China. She is the author of Public Rental Housing Governance in Urban China: Essence, Mechanisms and Measurement. Juan Yan is a reviewer of several international journals.
- Tianren Yang
Assistant Professor, Department of Urban Planning and Design, the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Tianren Yang is an assistant professor of urban planning and design at the University of Hong Kong. He is interested in developing advanced urban analytics and modelling to provide an all-round understanding of how cities evolve, particularly in relation to technology, policy and human behavior. His current research explores integrated policy perspectives to measure and predict how to maximize economic, environmental and social benefits through the spatial coordination of various urban developments (e.g., housing, jobs and transport). He earned his PhD in architecture (applied urban modelling) from the University of Cambridge and is a chartered urban planner in the UK and China.
- Pengcheng Zeng
PhD candidate, Preservation of the Architectural Heritage (Dastu), Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy
Pengcheng ZENG is a PhD candidate in Preservation of the Architectural Heritage at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Polytechnic University of Milan. He was awarded his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University. He has a great interest in the study of architectural heritage, majored in Conservation of Historic Architecture during his bachelor’s study, and has participated in several renovation projects and research programmes in Chang Qing Studio during his master’s study there. Now his study field is the history and preservation of the architectural heritage of Shanghai, especially the ones of the 1950s to the 1970s.
- Yongping Zhang
Assistant Professor, School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
Yongping Zhang is an assistant professor at the Department of Urban Development and Management, School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University. His research interest is mainly in the domain of quantitative urban studies, covering the topics highly related to urban big data analysis, smart cities, digital urban governance, sustainable transport and GIS. He has published 10+ papers by international peer-reviewed journals. He received his PhD degree in Advanced Spatial Analysis from University College London (UCL), the United Kingdom. Before this, he obtained three master degrees: one in European Spatial Planning and Environmental Policy from Cardiff University (the UK), one in Environment and Society Studies from Radboud University Nijmegen (the Netherlands), and one in Urban and Regional Planning from Peking University (China). He obtained his bachelor degree in Geographic Information System (GIS) from Wuhan University (China).