Damiano Cerrone is co-founder and content manager at SPIN Unit, a transnational urban research group combining art and science to find new and creative approaches to urban studies and advanced data solutions. Damiano is also Project researcher at Tampere University of Technology and principal researcher at TERREFORM New York. He received the Young Scholar award at the ESRI UC in San Diego and the second prize for the world Most unique map of the year. Cerrone introduced with SPIN Unit the conceptual framework for Urban metaMorphology, to develop a new research enquiry on the invisible forms of the city using geolocated social media data.

Panu Lehtovuori is the Professor of Planning Theory at the Tampere University of Technology, School of Architecture. Before the current position, he was the Professor of Urban Studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Faculty of Architecture (2005-2008 in charge, 2008-2012 full professor). Lehtovuori and his team have received several prizes, purchases, and mentions in architectural and planning competitions. He is a member of the editorial board of The Finnish Journal of Urban Studies and the Finnish Architectural Review. He is also authored the new, thoroughly updated edition of Key Concepts in Urban Studies, an international academic bestseller since 2005.

Jesús López Baeza is a Ph.D. candidate in Architecture at the University of Alicante. He collaborates with the department of Building Science and Urban Planning and carries out his research in the Building Design and Regional Planning Unit. As a member of SPIN Unit, he focuses on the study of urban phenomena using location-based social media data and GIS open data. Part of his work encompasses social cohesion, activities and livability of urban spaces, and citizen preferences in urban public spaces, among other dynamics. He combines his research with architectural design practice specialising in advanced spatial analysis.

Anssi Joutsiniemi is Adjunct Professor at the Aalto University. His research interests are centered on issues of complex system approaches in urban planning and his work include topics of urban modelling, morphological analyses and rule-based planning. His expertise is in GIS and computational methods in urban planning and design and his more recent research interests are in distributed urban modelling and simulation and algorithmic problem solving in a design process. Joutsiniemi also works as Associate Professor in Tampere University of Technology and holds Adjunct Associate Professorship in Curtin University, Australia.

I am a philosopher of science at TINT: Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, University of Helsinki. I also occasionally teach at Tallinn University of Technology and I’m an associate member of Spatial Intelligence Unit. My focus is on economics, and my particular interest is in how it is related to its neighbouring disciplines such as ecology, sociology, psychology and cognitive science. I’m more broadly interested in the foundations of human rationality, sociality and morality, and in how these issues can be informed by science and philosophy. I enjoy freshly roasted coffee, climbing, cycling and craft beer, in order of preference (but sometimes violating transitivity).

Prof. Harry Edelman (Dr. Arch.) holds the Chair of Sustainable Design and Development at the Tampere University of Technology. His current multidisciplinary research interests include using computer vision for data driven design, sustainability in procedural modeling, and resiliency in urban redevelopment. Prof. Edelman has practiced architecture in Finland, Germany, and Italy. He has founded Edelman Group – a consultancy designing integrated urban solutions and assisting stakeholders in urban development negotiations.

Dr. Sampo Ruoppila is research director of urban studies at the University of Turku, Finland, and director of Turku Urban Research Programme, a joint initiative between the City of Turku and universities to support academic urban research and promote research based policy advice for urban governance. Dr. Ruoppila is a specialist of urban policy and planning issues. His recent research topics include mainstream and alternative approaches in culture-led urban regeneration, development of Chinese university towns, and mobile participation in urban planning.

Daria Radchenko (PhD in Cultural Studies) is the vice-director of the Centre for Urban Anthropology at KB Strelka since 2015, leading the area of digital research. She also holds the position of senior researcher of Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, where she is working on the long-term project on the folklore of social media. Since 2005 she has been working in the field of on internet folklore and digital anthropology with a special interest in transmission of vernacular texts, and has published over 60 papers on these topics.

Critic, teacher, translator. Lieven is Adjunct Professor (Docent) in urban studies and planning methods at the Tampere University of Technology. He is the author of Helsinki in Early Twentieth-Century Literature, still the only study of Helsinki in Finnish-written literature to date. The book is based on his doctoral dissertation Moved by the City, which is available online here.

Lieven is currently researching the use and structure of narrative in urban planning. Specifically, he is examining the areas of Kalasatama and Jätkäsaari in Helsinki. More on this project here. He is also continuing work on literary cities, mostly Helsinki, but more recently also New York, and on the examination of the genre of the city novel

Renee is an architect, entrepreneur, and a researcher in the Estonian Academy of Arts, where he currently works on pedestrian modelling in cities. He runs a London-based architectural technology consultancy Slider Studio and Creatomus Solution based in Tallinn. He is driven by the vision of mass-customisation of architecture – developing “machines” that create architecture. He dreams of making one of such machines that influences masses, making everyone’s lives a little bit better.

Having finished his formal training and started professional career as an architect in Estonia, he completed MSc in Computing and Design as well as a PhD in Architecture at University of East London. In 2011, he was awarded a doctorate degree for his thesis investigating advanced architectural modelling technologies.

Jaana Vanhatalo has a masters (M. Sc.) in Region Studies from Tampere University and has worked as a project researcher in the School of Architecture at TUT since 2010. She also teaches in urban planning (mainly GIS) and Master’s thesis workshop -course. Her research interests are urban planning and planning processes, participation in planning, accessibility issues and GIS as a planning tool. She is starting PhD work concerning dilemmas of defining urban areas.