Talk
Disaster Risk and Resilience in Cities of the Asia-Pacific Region

Bio
Dr Iftekhar Ahmed is an Associate Professor and Program Convenor of the postgraduate programs in Disaster Risk and Resilience, University of Newcastle, Australia. He teaches on disaster risk and resilience principles, resilience of the built environment and research in the built environment. His research interests include post-disaster housing, disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation and urbanisation in the Asia-Pacific. He has written several books and many peer-reviewed publications and engages in various research and evaluation projects relating to disaster resilience. He is the lead author of the book "Disaster Resilience in South Asia: Tackling the Odds in the Sub-Continental Fringes" (Routledge, UK, 2020) and the lead editor of the book and special issue of Architecture journal “Resilience and Sustainability in Architecture and Urban Planning: Policies, Practices, Strategies and Visions” (MDPI, Switzerland, 2023). Dr Ahmed completed his PhD from Oxford Brookes University, UK; Master of Science in Architecture Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA; and Bachelor of Architecture (hons.), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, India.

Talk
Barriers to and Opportunities for Supply of “Missing Middle” Housing in the Canadian Context

Bio
Dawn Parker is a Professor in the School of Planning, Faculty of Environment, University of Waterloo, Canada. She has been actively involved in the development of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation, serving previously as Associate Director and Director, and most recently leading efforts to develop a Canadian Network for Complex Systems. Her research focuses on the development of fine-scale models that link the drivers of land-use change and their socioeconomic and ecological impacts, with completed and ongoing projects on organic agriculture in California’s Central Valley, timber harvest and carbon sequestration in eastern deciduous forests in West Virginia, U.S.A., and the effects of HIV/AIDS on smallholder agricultural households in Uganda. Her most recent work focuses on residential landscapes, examining interactions between land markets, landscaping, and carbon sequestration in ex-urban landscapes, and modelling the co-evolution of urban transit networks and residential neighbourhoods via land and housing markets. Her areas of technical expertise include agent-based modelling, land-use and property market modelling, and environmental and resource economics.

Talk
Urbanization in an Era of Climate Change: How Research Can Guide Action

Bio
Mark R. Montgomery is a Professor of Economics at Stony Brook University, holding a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan. He teaches mathematical statistics, applied econometrics, and economic demography in the university's Ph.D. program. Montgomery served as co-chair of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences Panel on Urban Population Dynamics, contributing to the report Cities Transformed (2003), and continues to collaborate on urbanization research using GIS and remote sensing data. His research focuses on urbanization, urban poverty, health, and climate-related risks. Notable publications include works in Demography, Science, and Frontiers in Global Women's Health, with recent studies on urbanization measures and urban family planning. He is a Founding Member of the Editorial Board for MDPI's journal Populations.

Talk
Climate change Resilience for the Built Environment

Bio
Dr. Berardi is the current President of the International Association of Building Physics (IABP). Dr. Berardi’s publications have received 19,000 citations in Google Scholar, where he has an h-index of 60, he's awards include (among others): Frontiers in 2024, the 2023 European Thermophysical Properties ECTP-NETZSCH AWARD; the 10th Canada's Clean16 award and Clean50 winner (list category: R&D), 2021; the Young Researcher Award by the AIGE in 2019; among others.