Alex Krieger, FAIA, has combined a career of teaching and practice, dedicating himself in both to understanding how to improve the quality of place and life in our major urban areas.

Mr. Krieger is Professor in Practice of Urban Design at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where he has taught since 1977.  He served as Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design (1998-2004, 2006-2007, 2019-2020), Director of the Urban Design Program (1990-2001), and as Associate Chair of the Department of Architecture (1984-1989). In addition to design studios and seminar courses at the GSD, he teaches a General Education course on the evolution of American cities at Harvard College. Since 1984, he has provided architecture, urban design, and urban planning services to a broad array of clients in numerous cities worldwide, focusing primarily on educational, institutional, healthcare, and public projects in complex urban settings. In 2017, he was named one of the Fifteen Professor of the Year by the Harvard Crimson.

Dr Ombretta Romice is Senior Lecturer in Urban design at the Department of Architecture, University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, and Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is also actively involved with IAPS, the International Association for People-Environment Studies, as President; in this role she has been on the organizing board of several Congresses (IAPS 2008, Rome; IAPS, 2010, Leipzig) and Symposia. She has been successful in securing the 22nd IAPS Congress  in Glasgow in 2012. The Congress will be jointly organized with Dr Edward Edgerton of the University of West of Scotland.

Her teaching and research work focuses on urban design, environmental psychology and user participation in design. She holds a PhD in urban design and a PostDoc in housing and regeneration sponsored by the European Union. She is a founding member of the Urban Sustainability through Environmental Design Network, an international network of urban design theorists and practitioners formed to research, co-ordinate and disseminate tools of sustainable urban design, with special emphasis on urban public space and its value to sustaining fulfilled lives.
In the Department she is Director of the Masters course in Urban Design. The course has a strategic collaboration with Glasgow City Council.
She collaborates on the course in Environmental Psychology at the University of West of Scotland, Department of Psychology with Edward Edgerton, with whom she organized the Conference Environmental Psychology in the UK: Bridging the Gap, in September 2005.

Nikos A. Salingaros (PhD in Physics) is Professor of Mathematics and an internationally recognized architectural theorist and urbanist. He is known for his original contributions that helped to establish new disciplines such as Biophilia, Design Patterns, Complexity, Neurogeometric design, the Fractal City, and the Network City. Salingaros worked with visionary architect and urbanist Christopher Alexander for twenty years in helping to edit Alexander's four-volume book The Nature of Order. He has applied science-based techniques to confirm the essential importance of traditional building approaches for human health and wellbeing.

On the urban scale, his research points to a radically novel way of building and repairing the city. He has linked human-scale urbanism to developing architectural movements such as the Network City, Peer-to-peer Urbanism, Biophilic Design, Biourbanism, Self-organizing Housing, Generative Codes, and Sustainable Architecture, some of which he initiated. In recognition of his efforts to understand architecture using scientific thinking, he was awarded the first grant ever given for research on architecture by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 1997. He was elected member of the INTBAU College of Traditional Practitioners and appointed to the INTBAU Committee of Honor. Dr. Salingaros is one of the “50 Visionaries who are Changing Your World" selected by the UTNE Reader in 2008. In Planetizen's 2009 survey, he was ranked 11th among “The Top Urban Thinkers of All Time".

Deane Alan Simpson is an architect, urbanist and educator teaching and researching at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture, Copenhagen, where he is professor and co-leader with Charles Bessard of the masters program Urbanism and Societal Change.

His research addresses contemporary forms of socio-spatial transformation at the intersection of demographic change and processes of modernization, globalization, neo-liberalization and welfare state transformation. His research has been published in journals such as Volume (Archis), Arbitare, Harvard Design Magazine, AD (Architectural Design), The Architectural Review, MONU, SAM and Archithese and in books such as Explorations in Architecture, Urban Transformations, Infrastructure as Architecture, Media and Urban Space, Imperfect Health: The Medicalization of Architecture, and Deviations: A Manual of Architecture. He is the co-author of the monograph Diller + Scofidio (+ Renfro): The Ciliary Function, published by Skira in 2007; author of Young-Old: Urban Utopias of an Aging Society published by Lars Müller Publishers in 2015; co-editor of The City Between Freedom and Security published by Birkhauser in 2017; and co-editor of Atlas of the Copenhagens published by Ruby Press in 2018.

Derya Oktay (BArch, Gazi Univ.; MSc, Middle East Technical Univ.; Pg. Dip. in Urban Design, Oxford Brookes Univ.; PhD, Yildiz Technical Univ. & Oxford Brookes Univ.) is a Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Maltepe University. She was the founding Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at Ondokuz Mayıs University and the Chair of the Department of Architecture; was a Professor at the Faculty of Architecture of the Eastern Mediterranean University, N. Cyprus, the Founding Director of the MS in Urban Design Programme, and the Founding Director of the Urban Research & Development Center (URDC) at the same institution. In addition, she has served as the President of the Society for International Development (SID) Lefkosa (Nicosia) Chapter in Cyprus. Her areas of research are sustainable urbanism and architecture, cultural-spatial aspects of cities and housing environments, urban identity, public spaces, quality of urban life, beside her main field of expertise ‘urban design’. Oktay has developed and offered various courses focusing on architectural design in urban context, urban design theory and principles, sustainable developments, public spaces, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. She was a Visiting Professor/Researcher in such universities as University of California-Berkeley, Politecnico di Milano, University of Michigan, Oxford Brookes University, and Pratt Institute - New York. 

She was a Jury Member at the 13th Biennale of Architecture - Venice Biennale 2012 - at "Recycling Common Ground" Workshop&Competition, and team member in various national and international urban/architectural design competition projects. She has experience in both qualitative and empirical research funded by the EU, USAID, TUBITAK, and EMU. She has authored more than 150 publications including books, chapters in refereed books, refereed journal articles of the highest categories, conference papers and popular press articles. Professor Oktay has spoken at various national and international platforms as an invited or keynote speaker, and has been serving on the editorial board of various refereed journals, and the champion Editor of the themed issues of Urban Design and Planning on “Quality of Life in Cities” (2012) and “Urban Identity in the Era of Globalisation” (Part One, 2016; Part Two, 2017). She has served on the Executive Board of Deans of Schools of Architecture (MİDEKON) May 2005 - Sept. 2020. Oktay has recently been nominated and selected to serve on the International Jury for the “UIA Award for Innovation in Architectural Education”.