Dr. Shobhakar Dhakal is an Associate Professor at School of Environment Resources and Development of the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand. He, currently, heads its Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Change. His areas of expertize are in energy and climate policies, and cities and climate change and largely draws-on concepts from engineering, economics and environment and multidisciplinary in nature. He is also a visiting researcher of the National Institute for Environmental Studies Japan since 2012. Dr. Dhakal was one of the Coordinating Lead Authors for the Fifth Assessment Report of Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for the Working Group on Mitigation (for the Chapter ‘Human Settlements, Infrastructure and Spatial Planning’). He also currently a co-editor/leader of ongoing international Assessment Report on Climate Change and Cities.  He serves as a member of the scientific steering committee of the Global Carbon Project, a premier scientific program under the Future Earth. He was a guest research scholar of International Institute for Applied System Analysis in Austria for 2010-2013, served as a lead author for the Global Energy Assessment, principal scientific reviewer for UNEP’s GEO-5, member of the Consensus Panel on Low Carbon Cities of the Academy of Sciences of South Africa, member of the Cities Energy Modeling Group of the International Energy Agency, among others. He was founder editor and editor-in-chief of Carbon Management Journal (2010-2016) and currently an Associate Editor of Sustainable Cities and Society Journal. Dr. Matthias Ruth is the Director of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University. He also serves as the founding director of Northeastern’s Resilient Cities Laboratory and its Urban Informatics program. Professor Ruth holds a Masters degree in Economics from the University of Heidelberg, Germany and a PhD in Geography from the University of Illinois, where he also received training in engineering and biology. Prof. Ruth’s research focuses on dynamic modeling of natural resource use, industrial and infrastructure systems analysis, and environmental economics and policy. His theoretical work heavily draws on concepts from engineering, economics and ecology, while his applied research utilizes methods of non-linear dynamic modeling as well as adaptive and anticipatory management. Applications of his work cover the full spectrum from local to regional, to national and global environmental challenges, as well as the investment and policy opportunities these challenges present. Professor Ruth has published 14 books and over 120 papers and book chapters in the scientific literature. He is a founder of Ecological Economics, serves on the boards of numerous journals and scientific organizations, is a founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal Urban Climate, and collaborates extensively with scientists and policy makers worldwide.