Webinar on Urban Informatics

Wenzhong Shi is the Chair Professor and Director of Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Smart Cities Research Institute, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He is Academician of International Eurasian Academy of Sciences and Fellow of Academy of Social Sciences (UK). He also serves as President of International Society for Urban Informatics and Editor-in-Chief of Urban Informatics. Prof Shi has published more than 280 research articles in journals indexed by Web of Science and 15 books. He is among the worldly top 2% cited researchers according to the standardized citation indicators published by Elsevier BV and scholar in Stanford University. He received Distinguished Scholar Prize by CPGIS and Gold Medal in Geneva Invention Expo (2021); Founder Award, International Spatial Accuracy Research Association (2020); Wang Zhizhuo Award, the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (2012); and State Natural Science Award, the State Council, China (2007).

Michael Batty is Bartlett Professor of Planning, Chairman of the Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis at University College London, and Distinguished Chair Professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He received his BA degree from The University of Manchester in Town and Country Planning in 1966 and his PhD in Architecture from the University of Wales in 1984. He has worked on computer models of cities and their visualization since the 1970s and has published several books, such as Cities and Complexity (2005), The New Science of Cities (2013), and Inventing Future Cities (2018) all MIT Press. Prior to his current position, he was Professor of City Planning and Dean of the School of Environmental Design at the University of Wales at Cardiff from 1979 to 1990 and then Director of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis at the State University of New York at Buffalo from 1990 to 1995. He was awarded the CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2004 and was the 2013 recipient of the Lauréat Prix International de Géographie Vautrin Lud. In 2015, he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society and in 2016 the Gold Medal of the Royal Town Planning Institute. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the British Academy.
 

Michael F. Goodchild is Professor Emeritus of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Until 2012, he held the Jack and Laura Dangermond Chair of Geography and was Director of UCSB’s Center for Spatial Studies. He received his BA degree from Cambridge University in Physics in 1965 and his Ph.D. in Geography from McMaster University in 1969. His research and teaching interests focus on issues in geographic information science, including uncertainty in geographic information, discrete global grids, and volunteered geographic information. He has directed or co-directed several large funded projects, including for the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, the Alexandria Digital Library, and the Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science. He was elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences in 2002, Foreign Member of the Royal Society, and Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 2010; and in 2007, he received the Prix Vautrin Lud. He has published over 550 books and articles. He moved to Seattle upon retirement in 2012 and currently holds part-time positions as Research Professor at Arizona State University and as Distinguished Chair Professor at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
 

Mei-Po Kwan is Choh-Ming Li Professor of Geography and Resource Management and Director of the Institute of Space and Earth Information Science at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She was a Visiting Distinguished Chair Professor of Geography and Geographic Information Science at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She received her MA degree in Urban Planning in 1989 from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her Ph.D. in 1994 in Geography from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research interests include environmental health, human mobility, social and transport issues in cities, healthy cities, and GIScience. Kwan is an Elected Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Association of Geographers (AAG). She was included in the 2019 Highly Cited Researchers list of the Web of Science Group and has received many prestigious honors and awards, including the Distinguished Scholarship Honors from the AAG and a Research Award from the US University Consortium for Geographic Information Science. Kwan has published over 310 books, articles and book chapters. She has delivered over 240 keynote addresses and invited lectures in more than 20 countries.

Carlo Ratti is Director of the MIT Senseable City Lab and Professor of Practice in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Ratti is the founder of Carlo Ratti Associati and author of “The city of tomorrow: sensors, networks, hackers, and the future of urban life”. Carlo graduated from the Politecnico di Torino, Italy, and the École des Ponts in Paris, France, and later earned his MPhil and PhD degrees at the University of Cambridge, UK. He initially joined MIT as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar in 2001, exploring how new technologies can enable a better integration between the natural and artificial worlds. Carlo has coauthored over 500 publications and is one of the top-10 most-citied scholars in urban studies. He is also an active contributor to the debate on cities and technology, and he has been a contributor to several general publications including Project Syndicate, The New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, Scientific American, Le Monde, CNN and BBC. He has also been a presenter at TED (in 2011 and 2015), a special adviser to the European Commission and currently serves as a member of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on cities.

Eric J. Miller has been a faculty member in the Department of Civil and Mineral Engineering, University of Toronto since 1983, where he is currently Director of the University of Toronto Transportation Research Institute. Research areas include activity-based travel modeling, integrated transport–land-use modeling, and agent-based microsimulation. He is the recipient of the 2009 ITE Wilbur S. Smith Distinguished Educator Award, inaugural winner of the University of British Columbia Margolese National Design for Living Award (2012) and the 2018 International Association for Travel Behavior Research Lifetime Achievement Award. Professor Eric Miller is a pioneer in the development and application of agent-based microsimulation model systems in large urban contexts. As director of the University of Toronto Transportation Research Institute (UTTRI), his research is centered in the implementation of activity-based travel models for use in operational practice. This includes the development of integrated transportation-land use models that permit the analysis of the two-way interaction between transportation systems and urban form. His work serves to improve urban transportation best practices and policy decision-making and, thereby improves the quality of life in urban settings.