Professor Chao Ren Associate Professor Faculty of Architecture HKU Scholars Hub

“Professor Ren is a sustainable architecture and planning scholar and an urban climatologist. She employs GIS, spatial analysis, remote sensing and computational simulation to study urban environmental performance and to develop climate-responsive design strategies and guidelines to help make cities more resilient to the changes rapidly coming upon an almost fully urbanised human civilisation. She is known not only for her prolific high-quality scientific publications and international collaborative research but also, and unusually, for her active and high-level engagement with municipality governments around the world. Her studies have led to a number of practical research and government consulting projects in cities across Asia and Europe and influenced the building design practices and city planning exercises. Professor Ren brought the inaugural meeting of the World Health Organization and World Meteorological Organization-sponsored Global Heat-Health Information Network to the University. Professor Ren is a truly rising star in the field of climate-resilient cities – being a leader in fundamental research, applied research and high-level governmental advisory. She has continued to display this unusual ability to bring her scientific work to bear on the highest levels of discussions, planning and design practice, policymaking, and scientific circles.”