Ali Cheshmehzangi is the World's top 2% field leader, recognised by Stanford University. He is an urbanist and urban designer by profession and by heart. He studies cities and city transitions, sustainable urbanism, and integrated urban design strategies. He has recently taken a senior leadership and management role at Qingdao City University (QCU). He is Professor in Architecture and Urban Planning, Director of the Center for Innovation in Teaching, Learning, and Research, and Advisor to the Department's international communications at QCU. Over 11 years at his previous institute, Ali was Full Professor in Architecture and Urban Design, Head of the Department of Architecture and Built Environment, Founding Director of the Urban Innovation Lab, Director of Center for Sustainable Energy Technologies, Interim Head of Research Group for Sustainable Built Environment, and Director of Digital Design Lab. He was Visiting Professor and now Research Associate of the Network for Education and Research on Peace and Sustainability (NERPS), Hiroshima University, Japan. So far, Ali has published over 300 journal papers, articles, conference papers, book chapters, and reports. His other 13 books are titled 'Smart-Eco Cities in China: Trends and City Profiles 2016' (2016), ' Designing Cooler Cities' (2017), the award-winning 'Eco-development in China' (2018), 'Sustainable Urban Development in the Age of Climate Change ' (2019), 'Identity of Cities and City of Identities' (2020), the double award-winning 'The City in Need' (2020), 'Urban Memory in City Transitions ' (2021), 'Sustainable Urbanism in China' (2021), 'China's Sustainability Transitions' (2021), 'Urban Health, Sustainability, and Peace in the Day the World Stopped' (2021), 'Green Infrastructure in Chinese Cities' (2022), 'ICT, Cities, and Reaching Positive Peace' (2022), and 'China's City Cluster Development in the Race to Carbon Neutrality' (2022). Ali is globally known for his research on 'urban sustainability'. Baojie He is a Professor of Energy and Sustainable Built Environment at School of Architecture and Urban Planning, and the leader of the Centre for Climate-Resilient and Low-Carbon Cities, Chongqing University. Baojie is also the Research Fellow at Network for Education and Research on Peace and Sustainability, Hiroshima University, Japan. Baojie He was a Postdoc Research Fellow, Research Associate, PhD researcher, at UNSW Sydney, Australia. Baojie is working on the technologies of Cool Cities and Communities and Net Zero Carbon Built Environment. Baojie has published more than 110 peer-reviewed papers in high-ranking and delivered invited talks in reputable conferences. Baojie has a H-index of 42 (Scopus). Baojie has been involved in several large research projects on energy and built environment in Australia. Baojie has been invited to act Topic Editor-in-Chief, Leading Guest Editor, Associate Editor, Editorial Board Member, Conference Chair, Sessional Chair, Scientific Committee of a variety of reputable international journals and conferences. Baojie received the Highly Cited Researcher Title (Clarivate) in 2022, the Sustainability Young Investigator Award in 2022, the Green Talents Award (Germany) in 2021, and National Scholarship for Outstanding Foreign Students (China) in 2019. Baojie was ranked as one of the Single-year & Career 100,000 global scientists (2%) by the Mendeley in 2020, 2021 and 2022. Ayyoob Sharifi is Professor at the IDEC Institute, Hiroshima University. His research is mainly at the interface of urbanism and climate change mitigation and adaptation. He has published over 100 articles on issues related to urban planning, design, and management. Ayyoob actively contributes to global change research programs such as the Future Earth and has served as a lead author for the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Before joining Hiroshima University, he was the Executive Director of the Global Carbon Project (GCP)-a Future Earth core project-leading the urban flagship activity of the project which is focused on conducting cutting-edge research for supporting climate change mitigation and adaptation in cities. Andreas Matzarakis studied meteorology at the Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich, and completed his dissertation on the bioclimate of Greece in 1995 at the Aristoteles University in Thessaloniki. Between 1995 and 2001, he served as a research assistant for the Meteorological Institute of the University of Freiburg. He wrote his habilitation on the 'thermal component of the urban climate'. Between October 2001 and July 2015, he was a senior research associate at the University of Freiburg, and was subsequently appointed an extraordinary Professor in October 2006. Since August 2015, he has served as the head of the Research Centre Human Biometeorology of the German Meteorological Service. Between 1996 and 2014, he chaired the commission for climate, tourism and recreation of the International Society of Biometeorology, and served as the vice-president of the International Society of Biometeorology between 2006 and 2009. Since 2016, he is the chairman or the German Society for the advancement of medical-meteorological research. He is the editor in Chief for the Section of Biometeorology of the Atmosphere Journal. From 2022 onwards, he has acted as the external member of the Administration Council of the Democritus University of Trace in Greece. His publications cover more than 300 review papers and journal articles, many books and book chapters. Core research interests relay to human bioclimatology and urban climatology, climatology of tourism and climate change impact research. A further research focus is the development of models and tools for applied climatology and biometeorology (e.g. the RayMan model, SkyHelios model, and CTIS (Climate-Tourism-Information-System)).
