Professor Ayyoob Sharifi has extensive experience of research and teaching in areas related to urban planning, urban resilience, smart cities, and climate change adaptation and mitigation. From 2013 to 2017, he was the director of the Global Carbon Project, one of the core projects of the Future Earth initiative, leading the project’s flagship research initiative on urban carbon management. Since 2018, he has served as an associate professor at Hiroshima University, contributing to research and teaching activities related to urban resilience, smart cities, and climate change adaptation/mitigation. He has also actively contributed to global change research programs such as the Future Earth and currently is serving as a lead author for the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Through these contributions, he has collaborated with an extended network of researchers and scientists with expertise in the fields of urban sustainability and resilience.   Pourya Salehi is an urban planner, a land manager, and the sustainability and resilient expert with a decade of professional experience. Prior to joining ICLEI in January 2017, Pourya was working as a researcher for the Institute of Geodesy and Geo-information (IGG) at the University of Bonn. Currently, Pourya is a researcher officer of ICLEI World Secretariat who manages and coordinates ICLEI »s Global Research Strategy across all ICLEI offices around the globe. He also manages, supervises, contributes to, and coordinates a few research and innovation projects for ICLEI. As the focal point of the organization for collaboration with academia, he is responsible for partnership building to expedite and foster the organization’s research-related activities and engagement. He is also a founding member of the Research & Innovation Technical Working Group at Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (GCo M) and has been representing ICLEI in that space since its establishment. Recently, UNCCD nominated him as a member of the Scientific Committee of the forthcoming UNCCD’s flagship publication, the Global Land Outlook 2.0.