Ms. Henashwari Siva is a postgraduate student currently completing her master’s study (MSc.) in Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) under the Faculty of Forestry and Environment supervised by Dr. Ruzana Adibah Mohd Sanusi, Dr. Badrul Azhar & Dr. Norizah of UPM who have been actively carrying out research studies in topics of Forest Management, Urban Ecology, Urban Forest Management, Human Thermal Comfort, Urban Microclimate and so on within urban parks of Malaysia. Ms. Henashwari Siva is also currently training as a technical programme officer in Forest conservation and restoration in a Malaysia based environmental NGO. Ms. Henashwari will be speaking on her research related to microclimate of urban parks within Klang Valley , Malaysia and its importance in decision making of the future greening strategies, specifically in the matters related to urban cooling from the green infrastructure in improving the quality of life and liveability of urban citizens.

Richard Smith is a Professor of Social Work at Wayne State University. He serves as lead teacher of the Master of Social Work concentration called Innovation in Community, Policy, & Leadership (I-CPL). His research seeks to understand the mechanisms and impact of interventions to improve sustainable community well-being (e.g., concentrated poverty, spatial inequality and well-being measures). He is currently part of a multidisciplinary research team funded by the National Science Foundation called Water Health Infrastructure Resilience and Learning (WHIRL), which will be working to understand the communication between water systems and health systems and how they engage the public. He has been also been working with Ecocity Builders of Oakland, CA on developing the ecocity standards. Smith earned a doctorate in social welfare from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to his academic career, he served as a Presidential Management Fellow at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, a reports officer at United Nations Children’s Fund in Mongolia, and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer at the Eastern Mongolia Pedagogical College. He serves as an editor at the Journal of Community Practice.

Dr.ir. Robbert Snep is a senior researcher 'Green Cities" at Wageningen University & Research (WUR) with 20+ years of professional experience in applied urban ecology (biodiversity, ecosystem services), ecosystem-based adaptation techniques, nature-based solutions for citizen health and water safety, environmental impact assessments, implementation of corporate social responsibility strategies, science-policy and science-practice interactions, national and regional ecosystem studies, planning for resilience and ecosystem-services, coordinator of interdisciplinary research teams and individual researcher/consultant. Focus of work is in the Netherlands, also projects in USA and Mozambique.

Joanne Sobeck, Ph.D., is an Associate Dean for Research and Director of the Center for Social Work Research in the School of Social Work at Wayne State University. In this capacity, she directs strategies for maintaining an infrastructure to support faculty research and community partnerships to develop and evaluate best practices in community-based interventions. She has developed a collaborative model for research that leverages university resources and builds capacity of communities and organizations. Her research interests include capacity building, child welfare workforce development, and health and environmental justice. Most recently, she has been involved in an inter-disciplinary study to examine the relationship between the Flint water crisis and the outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease. Currently she is involved with an NSF funded study on Water, Health, Infrastructure, Resilience and Learning. Dr. Sobeck has published on capacity building and sustaining grassroots organizations, antibiotic knowledge and beliefs, the Flint Water Crisis, child welfare policy, and Native American health. Her combined experiences and publications in community-based research, community engagement, and capacity building provide a strong basis for her research, teaching, and commitment to fulfilling her School’s urban mission.

Ian combines his love for music and love for nature; grounded in a deep respect for the beauty and abundance of Pachamama (Mother Earth), issues of global food security and local food growing systems, to entertain and educate. Examples weave together to form the rich tapestry that is the community-led food growing space May Project Gardens which he designed using permaculture principles. Here he mentors young people, nurturing ideas and fueling passions through music and a connection to the environment, through a 6 month leadership programme, Hip Hop Gardens.

My name is Katrine Soma. I am a senior scientist at Wageningen Economic Research at Wageningen University & Research (WUR). I have a PhD in economics, specialized in stakeholder participation in complex environmental management. I am since 2019 the project lead of the project Feeding cities and migration settlements, with outreach in Dhaka in Bangladesh, in Nairobi (Kibera) in Kenya and in Kampala in Uganda. It is a one-Wageningen project, including four of the research institutes at WUR. In Kenya (in the slum called Kibera) we have set up a new fish value-chain between Nyeri and Kibera, by using a food system approach, action research and working with the informal sector. This has gotten attention worldwide as a new way of reinventing the city, namely through local engagement, local ownership, local responsibilities and insights in how the informal sectors are operating. Scaling and upgrading opportunities are immense.

Work to conserve urban biodiversity, including both wildlife and people.

Gideon is professor of Innovation & Urban Green Spaces at Aeres University of Applied Sciences. His professorship conducts research on Rewilding Cities, Biobased Building Materials, Urban Micro-Climates, and Healthy Urban Green Spaces for the promotion of human well-being and future-proofing cities. Gideon is also sr. project leader-researcher of Sensing Streetscapes (www.sensingstreetscapes.com) and of the European Union-funded Cool Towns project (www.cooltowns.eu) at the Centre of Expertise Urban Technology at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS). He is a member of the chair Spatial Transformation and the chair Urban Water at AUAS. Gideon is an associate fellow at the Centre for Econics and Ecosystem Management, advisory board member of the Practice Innovation Centre Circular Economy (Price-ce.nl) and a member of the steer group Rewilding Cities at the Floriade Expo 2022. For example, Gideon is involved in the Floriade Challenge: THE GREEN ESCAPE to enable young professionals and students to gain experience in designing green street-level interventions to enhance the (thermal) comfort and health of residents. His research focuses on the redesign of the built environment in a changing climate to improve human health and well-being. Gideon holds a Ph.D. in Landscape Architecture from the University of Essex.

I am a postdoc researcher with interests in climate change adaptation, urban forestry, urban food, pollution, ecosystem services and green roofs. Currently working at the University of Florence, and previously at Free University of Bolzano, University of Manchester and Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan.

Justus Steins studied Industrial Engineering from 2013-2019 at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Since October 2019, he works as a research associate at the Institute for Industrial Production at KIT. He is part of the research group ‘project and resource management in the built environment’ that has experience in the fields of recycling economy, deconstruction, and energy efficiency in buildings. Mr. Steins’ research focuses on the assessment of innovative recycling processes, resource efficiency, and Life Cycle Assessment, in particular concerning autoclaved aerated concrete.

Ketil Stoknes works in a publicly owned commercial waste treatment company in Norway, Lindum AS, as a researcher and developer of circular solutions for organic waste to new products. Ketil holds a phd in microbiology, building on applied ecology. He focuses specifically on the integration of biogas plants for food waste with cultivation of new food crops (such as mushrooms and vegetables) in a controlled urban environment, much like we would do on Mars....Through his work in Lindum he has developed a process called digeponics, in which digested waste and CO2 is used as an input for soilless cultivation of crops in a greenhouse.

Linda is a Senior Research Fellow at APCEL and also an Associate Professor of Law in Universitas Gadjah Mada. She is an internationally recognised scholar in Indonesian international environmental law and her research has established her as a leading expert who is frequently consulted by the Indonesian government and international organizations. Her research focuses on international environmental issues, such as climate change, REDD+, land issues and customary (adat) issues. Linda was a member of the delegation leading Indonesia’s negotiations of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. From 2018 to 2021, Linda is a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report. Linda was a Visiting Fellow at APCEL from 5 August 2019 to 3 September 2019 under the APCEL Visiting Fellow Programme.

Prof. dr hab. BARBARA SZULCZEWSKA Institute of Urban and Regional Development (since 2020) Graduated in landscape architecture at the Faculty of Horticulture, Warsaw Agricultural University (now: Warsaw University of Life Sciences); completed Postgraduate Studies of Town Planning at the Faculty of Architecture, PhD received at the Faculty of Architecture, Technical University of Gdańsk. For more than twenty years have been employed in the Institute of Physical Planning and Municipal Economy in Warsaw, then from 1997-2019 in the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. In 1998 - 2001 was also employed in the Ministry of Environment as the advisor to the minister. Scientific and professional interests concern methods of environmental evaluations as a basis for physical development at regional and local level, spatial problems of sustainable development, protection plans for national and landscape parks and in last years – green infrastructure. Member of the Committee for Spatial Economy and Regional Planning, Polish Academy of Sciences, a member of Polish Society of Town Planners (and expert of Polish Society of Town Planners of on the matters of environmental problems in spatial planning), member of Polish Association of Landscape Ecology. Author or co-author of around 50 scientific publications, 6 books and more than 30 studies.