many possible cities

Riccardo Valentini

Riccardo Valentini graduated at University of Rome “La Sapienza” in Physics. In 1987 he became researcher at the University of Tuscia, Faculty of Agriculture continuing to work on plant – climate interactions. He was one of the pioneer of terrestrial carbon flux measurements and coordinated a global network of more than 600 flux towers (FLUXNET) placed in several world ecosystems in North and South America, Europe, Australia, China, Japan and Africa. He was coordinating lead author in the 3rd IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and 5th report on Climate Impacts and Adaptation. He is Lead Author of the IPCC Special Report Climate Change and Land Use. He has been awarded of the Zayed Intern. Prize for the Environment as member of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Board (2006), and recently of the “ Ernst Heckel” Prize of the Federation of European Ecological Societies (2015) and of the Medal of the Italian Academy of Science “of the XL” for Physics and Natural Sciences (2018). He is Thompson Reuters highly cited scientist in 2016 and 2017 and Clarivate highly cited scientist in 2018. Laurea Honoris Causa Facultè Universitaire des Sciences Agronomiques de Gembloux, Belgium (2006). Laurea Honoris Causae Russian State Agricultural University – Timiryazev Academy, Moscow, Russia (2015); Laurea Honoris Causae Financial University, Moscow, Russia (2017), Laurea Honoris Causae “Georgian Technical University”, Tblisi, Georgia (2018).
His main research interests concern GHG balances in relation to land use and forestry, including relevant feed-backs on the global biogeochemical cycles and climate impacts. Recently his research is dedicated to develop new technologies and big data analytics for ecosystem services monitoring and predictions of climate change impacts, particularly on forest at tree level. He invented the TreeTalker sensor to understand and quantify responses of tree physiological parameters to climate extremes and early monitoring of tree decline.

Indy Johar

Architect, co-founder of 00 (project00.cc) and most recently Dark Matter, Studio Master at AA. Indy, on behalf of 00, has co-founded multiple social ventures from Impact Hub Westminster to Impact Hub Birmingham, along with working with large global multinationals & institutions to support their transition to a positive Systems Economy. He has also co-led research projects such as The Compendium for the Civic Economy, whilst supporting several 00 explorations/experiments including the wikihouse.cc, opendesk.cc. Indy is a non executive director of WikiHouse Foundation & RIBA Trustee and Advisor to Mayor of London on Good Growth. Most recently he has founded Dark Matter – a field laboratory focused on radically redesigning the bureaucratic & institutional infrastructure of our cities, regions and towns for a more democratic, distributed great transition. Dark Matter work with institutions around the world, from UNDP (Global), McConnell (Canada), TFL, GLA (London) to Bloxhub (Copenhagen). He has taught, lecturedat various institutions from the University of Bath, TU-Berlin; Architectural Association, University College London, Princeton, Harvard, MIT and New School. He writes often on the https://provocations.darkmatterlabs.org blog.