Dorota Kamrowska-Zaluska, Poland
Dorota Kamrowska-Zaluska is Assistant Professor and Director of the mid-career program on urban development and management of metropolitan areas, at the Department of Urban Design and Regional Planning at the Faculty of Architecture, Gdansk University of Technology. She is a Visiting Scholar and Research Fellow at several research institutions incl. the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2013), a Charted Urban Planner with 16 years of experience working both for the public and the public sector.

She is also taking part in various participatory research and user-oriented design projects. Her research interests are: smart and sustainable cities, territorial impact of EU Cohesion Policy, social innovation in urban regeneration. Dorota is the author of more than thirty papers and a book on sustainable urban regeneration; she is involved in various research projects on smart and sustainable development. She is a board member of the Association of Polish City Planners, President of Gdansk Division, and ISOCARP Deputy Bureau Member for Poland.

Awais Piracha, Australia
Awais Piracha is an urban planning academic and Associate Professor with the Western Sydney University in Australia. He is a renewed international expert in the areas of sustainable urban development and use of spatial analysis in land use and transport planning. Professor Piracha was trained as a civil/environmental engineer as well as a town planner. He is a Planning Institute of Australia Registered Practicing Planner and a NSW Independent Hearing and Assessment Panel Expert.

He previously worked as a researcher with the United Nations University (UNU) in Tokyo, Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) Bangkok and University of Dortmund Germany. In his professional career spanning over two decades, Awais has led or participated in numerous research and consultancy projects as an urban planning expert.