Ayyoob Sharifi, PhD, Hiroshima University, Japan
Ayyoob Sharifi is a Professor at Hiroshima University, Japan, where he works at the IDEC Institute and the Graduate School of Innovation and Practice for Smart Society. He is also a Visiting Professor at the School of Architecture and Design of the Lebanese American University. His research focuses on the intersection of urbanism and climate change mitigation and adaptation. He has served as a lead author for the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and an active contributor to the Future Earth global change research program. Previously, he was the Executive Director of the Global Carbon Project (GCP), a Future Earth core project, where he led the urban flagship activity that aimed to support climate action in cities through cutting-edge research. His main goal as a scholar is to inform actions toward creating sustainable and resilient cities and communities.
Niki Frantzeskaki, PhD, Utrecht University, the Netherlands
Niki Frantzeskaki is a Chair Professor of Regional and Metropolitan Governance and Planning, Section Spatial Planning, Geosciences Faculty, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Her expertise is in urban transitions and transformations, their governance and planning, with a focus on achieving climate change adaptation and mitigation, sustainability, and resilience. Her research also focuses on the governance and planning of nature-based solutions for contributing to climate change resilience and more just urban futures. She has a rich international research experience with a portfolio of ongoing projects in Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States of America. She has been a Highly Cited Researcher awardee from Clarivate Analytics in 2020 ,2021 and 2022, putting her in the top 1% of researchers globally in the cross-field of social sciences and ecology. From 2019 to 2021, she has been a Research Professor and Director of the Centre for Urban Transitions at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. From 2010 to 2019, she has been an Associate Professor at the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions with Erasmus University Rotterdam. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and 18 special issues and released six books on urban sustainability transitions in 2017, 2018, 2020 and 2023.