Prof. Dr. Joern Birkmann is head of the Institute of Spatial and Regional Planning (IREUS) at the University of Stuttgart. He studied spatial planning at the University of Dortmund. He obtained his doctorate there with a dissertation on monitoring sustainable regional development, for which he received the university's dissertation award. He then worked 10 years at the United Nations University's Institute for Environment and Human Security as head of section. He completed his habilitation in geography at the University of Bonn.

Dr. Birkmann is Coordinating Lead Author for the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and full member of the Academy for Spatial Research and Planning (ARL). He is also a member of several expert and policy advisory groups, including the Sustainability Council of the State of Baden-Wuerttemberg and the German Committee Future Earth (DKN). He has published peer-reviewed papers on topics related to sustainable spatial development, indicators, vulnerability, risk, resilience and governance.

Andreas Christen studied Geography with a minor in Chemistry and Meteorology at the University of Basel, Switzerland. In 2005 he received his PhD in Meteorology from the University of Basel with a dissertation on "atmospheric turbulence and surface energy exchange in urban environments" (under the supervision of Prof. Eberhard Parlow and Prof. Mathias Rotach). In 2005/06 he was post-doctoral researcher and lecturer at the Institute for Ecology of the Technical University of Berlin (Prof. D. Scherer). Between 2006 and 2013 he was appointed assistant professor and from 2013 to 2017 associate professor in Geography and the Atmospheric Science Program at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, where he also led the “Laboratory for Atmospheric Research on Greenhouse Gas Exchange”. In 2012/13 he was visiting professor in the lab of Prof. M.B. Parlange at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. Since 2017 he is Full Professor in Environmental Meteorology at the University of Freiburg and heads the chair of Environmental Meteorology in the Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources.

Dr. Nektarios Chrysoulakis is a Director of Research at FORTH and Head of the Remote Sensing Lab (http://rslab.gr). He holds a BSc in Physics, a MSc in Environmental Physics and PhD in Remote Sensing from the University of Athens. He has been involved in R&D projects funded by the European Union, the European Space Agency and the Ministries of Environment, Development, Culture and Education. His main research interests include urban climate, urban energy balance, urban resilience, urban planning and metabolism, natural and technological hazards, surface temperature and albedo, environmental monitoring and change detection.

Dr. Chrysoulakis is cPI of the European Research Council (ERC) Synergy project urbisphere (ERC-SyG) focusing on coupling dynamic cities and climate. He is the coordinator of the H2020-Space project CURE, focusing on Copernicus services exploitation in the domain of urban resilience. He has coordinated the projects URBANFLUXES (H2020), SEN4RUS (ERA.Net-RUS Plus), BRIDGE (FP7) GEOURBAN (FP7). He has also participated projects ECOPOTENTIAL (H2020), THINKNATURE (H2020), IGIC (LIFE) and FLIRE (LIFE).

Dr. Chrysoulakis is a Visiting Professor at the Department of Physics of the University of Crete, teaching the course “Principles and Applications of Satellite Remote Sensing”; and at the CIHEAM-MAICh, teaching the course “Remote sensing of Urban Environments”. He has more than 250 publications in per-review journals and conference proceedings.

Sue Grimmond is the Met Office Joint Chair and Professor of Urban Meteorology at University of Reading. She joined the Department of Meteorology, University of Reading in August 2013. Previously she was a Chair of Physical Geography and Professor at King’s College London, after being Assistant, Associate and Full Professor at Indiana University, Bloomington USA. She completed her undergraduate degree (BSc Hons) at the University of Otago, New Zealand, and graduate degrees (MSc and PhD) at The University of British Columbia.

She has been awarded a Doctor of Science Honoris Causa (Göteborg U.), Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), Universitatis Lodziensis Amico Medal (U. Łódź), Helmut E Landsberg Award (AMS), Luke Howard Award (IAUC), Ernest Frolich Fellowship (CSIRO), Japan Society for Promotion of Science Invitation Fellowship (U. Tokyo), Eminent Professor Visit Award (Monash U.), Visiting Professor (National Centre for International Research of Low-carbon and Green Buildings (MOST)/ Joint International Research Laboratory of Green Buildings and the Built Environments (MoE) Chongqing U.), Visiting Distinguished Professor (Tsinghua U.), Visiting Special Expert (Shanghai Meteorological Bureau), and Isaac Manasseh Meyer Fellowship (National U. Singapore). She is on the editorial board of Urban Climate and npj Climate and Atmospheric Science; and previously Editor for Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology and member of several others (e.g. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Annals of Assoc of American Geographers, Geograpy Compass, J. Applied Meteorology and Climate).

She is a past President of the International Association of Urban Climate (IAUC) and past Lead Expert for the WMO on Urban and Building Climatology. Current international Scientific Committee membership includes KIT Earth and Environment International Scientific Advisory Board (Germany); the Scientific Committee of the Institute of Urban Meteorology (CMA) (China), ARUP (UK) Project Review Board Climate Services in China, and ICUC-11 (IAUC) and WMO GURME Scientific Advisory Group.