Brian Stone is a Professor in the School of City and Regional Planning at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he teaches in the area of urban environmental planning and design. Stone’s program of research is focused on the spatial drivers of urban environmental phenomena, with an emphasis on urban scale climate change, and is supported by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He is Director of the Urban Climate Lab at Georgia Tech. Stone’s work on urbanization and climate change has been featured on CNN and National Public Radio, and in print media outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post. He is author of The City and the Coming Climate: Climate Change in the Places We Live (Cambridge University Press), which received a Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award. Stone holds degrees in environmental management and planning from Duke University and the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Evan Mallen is a graduate of the City & Regional Planning doctoral program, where he studied Environmental Planning and Climate Change. He teaches Urban Environmental Planning & Design and created the inaugural Sustainable Cities Studio. Evan continues his research with Georgia Tech’s Urban Climate Lab where he focuses on urban heat island mitigation and public health response with international public, private, and academic collaborators. His research focuses on accessible heat vulnerability and mortality modeling to help municipalities better protect vulnerable populations and enhance environmental justice through reduced inequities in heat exposure. Currently, he works as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Teaching & Learning leading the Graduate Teaching Fellows program and the Tech to Teaching Capstone. Evan is also the program co-coordinator for the Georgia Tech University Center of Exemplary Mentoring managing the Sloan Foundation Fellowship program in the Colleges of Engineering and Computing.
Evan holds a BS in Physics and a Master of Urban Planning both from the University of Michigan, where he later served as a research associate with the Great Lakes Climate Adaptation Assessment for Cities and the Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments. At Georgia Tech, Evan strives to enhance sustainability curriculum in partnership with the Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain and the Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development (RCE) Greater Atlanta. In Atlanta, Evan regularly contributes to local sustainability planning initiatives through public lectures, workshops, and advisory committees, collaborating with groups such as Trees Atlanta, Central Atlanta Progress, the Urban Catalyst Lab, and Atlanta’s emerging Urban Ecology Framework.
Contact: Esmallen@gatech.edu
Perry Yang is a Professor and Director of Eco Urban Lab of the School of City and Regional Planning and the School of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is also a Visiting Professor of the Department of Urban Engineering at the University of Tokyo from 2022. Perry’s work focuses on incorporating data analytics into urban design to improve ecological and energy performance of cities. He has published more than fifty articles and book chapters in this area from 2009, including a new book Urban Systems Design: Creating Sustainable Smart Cities in the Internet of Things Era that he co-edited and co-authored six chapters in 2020 by Elsevier. He co-edited a 2019 theme issue Urban Systems Design: From Science for Design to Design in Science in Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, a prestigious journal in planning to explore new urban design research agenda and applications of emerging technologies, data analytics and urban automation to placemaking in the context of smart city movement. Beyond writing, Yang has been awarded more than ten prizes in international competitions continuously from 2005 in Asian cities, including the 2009 World Games Park at Kaohsiung, Taiwan, a project opened in July 2009 and featured by CNN as an “eco-friendly” venue. His urban design work was introduced in the January 2010 issue Ecological Urbanism at World Architecture (WA), a leading architecture journal by Tsinghua University. His recent design projects were shortlisted in the 2022 Asian Games Village in Hangzhou in 2017, the Musi River Revitalization at Hyderabad in 2018, and two water town designs in China’s Yangtze River Delta region in 2020-2021 during the pandemic. From 2017 to 2021, he has been involved in smart city projects in Japan, including one of Tokyo’s 2020 Olympic sites at Urawa Misono, in collaboration with the University of Tokyo and Global Carbon Project (GCP).
Yang served as the endowed Bayer Chair Professor of UNEP Institute at Tongji University from 2014 to 2018. He is also a faculty fellow of the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems at Georgia Tech. He has served as a board member of the International Urban Planning and Environment Association (UPE) from 2007. He is a scientific committee member of International Conference on Applied Energy (ICAE), in which he served as a session chair of Urban Energy at ICAE from 2014 to 2019, and as a keynote speaker for the 2021 Applied Energy Symposium in September 2021. Prior to joining the Georgia Tech faculty, he was a Fulbright Scholar and SPURS Fellow at MIT from 1999 to 2000, and an Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the National University of Singapore from 2001 to 2008.
Elora Raymond is an Assistant Professor in the School of City and Regional Planning in the College of Design at Georgia Tech. She studies the financialization of housing and property in land, patterns of displacement and dispossession through housing, and racial segregation. Her climate-change oriented research examines housing and real estate finance processes during the disaster recovery process, including work on the rise in evictions following hurricanes and major flooding events, and ongoing projects on the influence of mortgage finance, investment, and eviction processes on displacement and migration following hurricanes in the panhandle of Florida and in Puerto Rico.
Her work has been featured in Cityscape, JPER, Urban Geography, Housing Studies, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s Community and Economic Development Discussion Paper Series. Her research has been featured in the Economist, New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Bloomberg’s Businessweek, NPR’s Morning Edition, ABC’s Good Morning America, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Univision, and Radio New Zealand, among other news outlets.
Jairo Garcia is the former Director of Climate Policies and Renewables with the City of Atlanta and author of Atlanta’s Climate Action Plan. He teaches Sustainable Urban Development, Sustainable Cities Studio, and Introduction to Land Use Planning in the School of City and Regional Planning, and Climate Policy in the School of Public Policy. His work focuses on urban sustainability and climate policies with an emphasis on mobility, urban food systems, and equity. In 2017, he received the National Individual Climate Leadership Award conferred by the EPA and C2ES. This award recognized his leadership in addressing climate change and engaging organization, peers, and partners. Jairo holds a BSEE degree, an MSc in Computer Networks Management, an MSc in Sustainability Management, and a Doctoral degree in Educational Technology and Sustainability.
Contact: jairo.garcia@design.gatech.edu
Michaela Master is a Master’s of City and Regional Planning student at Georgia Tech, with a specialization in environment and health planning. She received her undergraduate degree from the Ohio State University in Environment, Economy, Development, and Sustainability, with a minor in City and Regional Planning. Prior to joining the UCL team, she worked as an Americorps VISTA at an affordable housing agency and an associate at a sustainable investment analytics firm. She’s interested in the relationship between the built environment, social determinants of health, and environmental wellbeing, and is excited to build on these interests and support resilient planning efforts as a Graduate Research Assistant with the UCL.
Contact: Mmaster7@gatech.edu