Associate Professor Simon Lockrey is a leading sustainability and design-based entrepreneur, board member, and academic based at RMIT, having managed research include life cycle assessment (LCA), co-design, design innovation, marketing, resource efficiency, flammable cladding, automotive history, and food waste. As a result, he has generated millions of dollars of ‘industry facing’ Category 1, 2, 3 and 4 research, creating global impact through policy changes, commercial outcomes, media coverage, quality academic publications, and hundreds of citations. Dr Lockrey’s professional work crosses a large range of industries including consultancies, leading commercial interior furniture manufacturers and multinational appliance companies, leading to billions of dollars in income and Intellectual Property (IP), and his elevation to board level at global urban gardening brand Glowpear, the International Sustainable Development Research Society (ISDRS), and as Vice President of the Automotive Historians Australia.

Usha Iyer-Raniga is a Professor at the School of Property, Construction and Project Management at RMIT University. She is also the Co-Lead of the United Nations One Planet Network’s (OPN) Sustainable Buildings and Construction Programme (SBC), (10YFP) on Sustainable Consumption and Production aligned with SDG12. Usha brings wide industry experience to her teaching and research, and has been involved in key projects on sustainability and circularity in the built environment since her commencement at RMIT University at the Centre for Design.

Thami Croeser is an urban planner and spatial analyst working with RMIT University’s ICON Science Program with a specialist interest in urban greening, with a history of delivering greening projects and policy in Melbourne’s most urbanised spaces. He currently is part of an international project team advising the European Union on planning for urban greening; over the next three years Thami will facilitate the development of greening plans for eight cities around the world.  Thami also works as a spatial analyst at the University of Melbourne, assisting a team of researchers in a large Linkage grant project looking at how we can optimise urban forestry programs in local government for both biodiversity and human wellbeing.

Alexis Kalagas is Head of Public Programs at Molonglo, and leads an advanced architecture studies unit at MADA. Previously a foreign policy advisor with the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, he worked on design and research projects across Europe, Latin America, and Africa with the Zürich-based practice Urban-Think Tank. He has pursued his interest in the complex economic, social and technological forces reshaping our experience of urban space and the home as a Harvard GSD Richard Rogers Fellow, a Future Architecture Fellow, and as a participant in the Seoul Biennale of Architecture & Urbanism.