Chris Kennedy is a Professor of Industrial Ecology at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. He has worked for over 30 years on the world’s toughest environment and sustainability challenges, from climate change, waste and pollution to declining biodiversity. Chris has been a consultant to several national governments and international institutions, including a secondment to the OECD in Paris. He was previously a professor at the University of Toronto, and a visiting professor at Oxford University and ETH Zürich. Chris is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and a former President of the International Society for Industrial Ecology.

Dr. Kennedy is the author of three books:

• Advanced Introduction to Industrial Ecology (2025)
• Malthus Enigma: Technology, Science, and Policy for a Fragile Earth (2025)
• The Evolution of Great World Cities: Urban Wealth and Economic Growth (2011)

Distinguished Professor Bai joined ANU in 2011, as a professor of Urban Environment and Human Ecology at the Fenner School of Environment and Society. Prio to ANU, she was a Senior Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO, visiting professor at Yale University, and senior researcher at environmental research institutes in Japan. She is a Visiting Professor at The University of Tokyo.

Professor Bai's research focuses on several frontiers of urban sustainability science and policy, including drivers and consequence of urbanization, structure, function, processes, and evolution of urban socio-ecological systems, urban metabolism, urban sustainability experiments and transition, cities and climate change, and urban environmental policy and governance, and cross scale translations between planetary level boundaries and targets into cities.

Professor Bai authored/co-authored over 200 publications, including near 30 in Nature, Science and Nature Research journals. She is serving as Coordinating Lead Author for the IPCC Climate Change and Cities Special Report, and in the past served as a Lead Author for the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the Global Energy Assessment, IPBES Global Assessment and IPCC AR6. She delivered invited lectures/seminars at top academic institutions as well as keynotes at many international conferences and science/policy forums. She supervised award-winning PhD and Honours students.

Professor Bai is a member of Earth Commission, where she co-leads its Working Group on cross scale translation that aims to connect cities and businesses to planetary and earth system boundaries. She was an inaugural member of the Science Committee of Future Earth where she served as inaugural co-chair of the Urban Knowledge-Action Network. She served as the Vice Chair of the Science Committee of the International Human Dimensional Program for Global Environmental Change (IHDP); Science Steering Committee of IHDP Industrial Transformation Core Project; and Steering Committee of US National Academies Sustainable Cities Initiative. She served on the European Research Council assessment panels for Consolidator and Advanced grants, and was a member of Global LafargeHolcim Award Jury for 2018.

She is a Fellow of Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia since 2017, and was named one of the World's 100 Most Influential People in Climate Change Policy in 2019 and 2021. She is the 2018 Laureate of the Volvo Environment Prize, and the 2021 Global Economy Prize. She is an ARC Laureate Fellow since 2023

Prof Linda Godfrey is a Principal Scientist at the CSIR and Extraordinary Professor at North-West University, South Africa, and holds a PhD in Engineering. With over 25-years of sector experience, she manages Circular Innovation South Africa on behalf of the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation. She has provided strategic input to a number of local, regional and international waste and circular economy initiatives for the United Nations, European Union, World Bank, South African Government, business and academia. She lectures internationally on solid waste management, and on the circular economy in the context of developing countries. She has published extensively in the field.

Anu Ramaswami is an interdisciplinary environmental engineer and professor at and environmental engineering, and the High Meadows Environmental Institute. She has pioneered sustainable urban systems science and knowledge co-production for developing low-carbon, healthy, and equitable cities. Her work explores how eight key sectors – that provide water, energy, food, buildings, mobility, connectivity, waste management and green/public spaces – shape human and environmental wellbeing, from local to global scales. Ramaswami’s work integrates environmental science and engineering, industrial ecology, public health and public affairs, with a human-centered and systems focus. She is the author of more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, published in leading journals such as Science, Nature Climate Change, Nature Sustainability, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Environmental Science & Technology, and Environmental Research Letters. She is the inaugural director of the M.S. Chadha Center for Global India at Princeton University, the lead principal investigator and director of the National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported Sustainable Healthy Cities Network, and serves on the United Nations Environment Programme’s International Resource Panel. In 2022, she received the American Academy of Environmental Engineers & Scientists Science Award and the Steven K. Dentel Association of Environmental Engineering & Science Professors Award for Global Outreach.

Dr. Heinz Schandl, PhD, is a senior science leader at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Canberra, where he directs the Circular Economy Initiative and coordinates research efforts in this area. Additionally, he is an adjunct professor at Nagoya University’s Graduate School of Environmental Studies in Japan, a member of the UN Environment Program International Resource Panel, and a past president of the ISIE. His research focuses on social theory, industrial metabolism, and sustainability policy to advance resource efficiency, waste minimization, and circular economy principles.

Professor Khoo Peng Beng is the Head of the Architecture and Sustainable Design (ASD) pillar and Professor of Practice at SUTD.

Prior to joining SUTD in 2025, Prof Khoo served as an Adjunct Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS) for over 23 years, where he led multiple international design studios representing NUS and Singapore in architecture and design.

With over 31 years of experience in the architecture field, Prof Khoo is the co-founder of ARC Studio Architecture + Urbanism which he established in 1998 with his wife and fellow architect, Belinda Huang. Their architectural practice is renowned for its bold and transformative designs across multiple countries, including Singapore, Malaysia, China, India, Cambodia, Timor-Leste, and Rwanda. One of their most iconic projects, the Pinnacle@Duxton, has redefined high-rise, high-density public housing in Singapore, proving that sustainable, green, and living closer together can be both practical and enjoyable. In recognition of their design excellence, outstanding contributions to the community and inspiring the younger generation, the team was conferred the prestigious President’s Design Award Designer of the Year in 2020. The project has also won several other prestigious awards including the CTBUH Best Tall Building in Asia Australasia, CTBUH Most Sustainable Tall Building Award, World Architecture Festival (WAF) Best Residential Building in the World, FIABCI Prix d’Excellence Award and ULI Award for Excellence 2010.

In 2022, Prof Khoo co-curated the ArchiFest and in 2010, he was the lead curator for the Singapore Pavillion ‘1000 Singapores: A Model of a Compact City’ at the Venice Biennale.

Prof Khoo’s research interests spans across quantum consciousness, holarchy, trans-contextuality, deep sustainability, and integral ecology in architecture.

Dr. Marian Chertow is the Manufacturer’s Association Professor of Industrial Ecology at Yale University. She is also Director of the Center for Industrial Ecology at the Yale School of the Environment. She has an appointment at the School of Management (SOM) and for 20 years taught at the National University of Singapore (NUS) having been on the founding faculty that developed the school’s Master’s of Environmental Management program. Dr. Chertow’s research and teaching focus on industrial ecology, business/environment issues, circular economy and waste management. She is best known for championing the study of industrial symbiosis involving geographically-based exchanges of materials, energy, water and by-products within networks of businesses globally. Prior to Yale, Professor Chertow spent ten years in environmental business and state and local government including service as president of a bonding authority that built a billion dollars’ worth of waste infrastructure. Her work has brought her several awards including from the U.S. EPA, the CT Women’s Hall of Fame, and the highest award from the International Society for Industrial Ecology (ISIE).

Dr. Chertow is a frequent international lecturer, is an Advisor to the Center for Energy Efficiency and Sustainability at Trane Technologies, Inc, is on the Board of TerraCycle US Inc, and the Board of the Alliance for Research in Corporate Sustainability (ARCS).

In addition to her academic work, Professor Chertow started a theatre company at Barnard College dedicated to performing Ancient Greek plays in the original language. Currently, she is teaching a cross-listed class: “Green Stages: Environmental Themes in the Theatre.” She is most proud of her husband Matthew Nemerson, SOM 1981 and daughters Elana and Joy Nemerson.