Prof. Maibritt Pedersen Zari is an Associate Professor at Huri Te Ao, The School of Future Environments, Auckland University of Technology, in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Her research area of regenerative design redefines sustainable architecture and urban design through emulating ecosystems, working with ecologies and nature, and integrating complex social factors into architectural and urban design. Pedersen Zari's expertise includes biomimicry, biophilia, urban ecosystem services, nature-based solutions, urban climate change adaptation, and urban biodiversity. Her most active research stream relates to urban climate change adaptation in Oceania. She is the primary investigator for the Marsden-funded project NUWAO (Nature-Based Urban Design for Wellbeing and Adaptation in Oceania) and leads a complex and diverse team aiming to codesign nature-based urban design solutions rooted in Indigenous knowledge that support climate change adaptation and individual and community wellbeing in different contexts across Oceania (including Aotearoa). She is also an investigator on the Endeavor Fund RUN (Restoring Urban Nature) project, where she is part of a team investigating residential development for urban biodiversity. Pedersen Zari is co-author/editor of Ecologies Design: Transforming Architecture, Landscape, and Urbanism (2020), author of Regenerative Urban Design and Ecosystem Biomimicry, and co-author of Materials for a Healthy, Ecological and Sustainable Built Environment.
Professor Philippa Howden-Chapman studied at the University of Auckland and was awarded a PhD in 1987. She is the sesquicentennial distinguished professor of public health at the University of Otago, Wellington, New Zealand, and is co-director of two major long-standing research groups, He Kāinga Oranga/ Housing and Health Research Programme and the New Zealand Centre for Sustainable Cities, which both received major research grants in 2020. She conducts randomized community housing trials in partnership with local communities, which have had a major influence on housing, urban policy, and health. Her work focuses on reducing inequalities in the determinants of health and wellbeing and she has received several awards, including the Prime Minister's Science Team Prize. She has a strong interest in reducing inequalities in the determinants of health and has published widely in this area, receiving several awards for her work, including the Prime Minister’s Science Team Prize in 2014. She was chair of the WHO Housing and Health Guidelines Development Group and is currently chair of the ISC Committee on Urban Health and Wellbeing: A Systems Approach and a director on the Board of Kāinga Ora-Homes and Communities.
