Francesco Guarino is an Associate Professor at the Department of Engineering of the University of Palermo, where he is also the Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG 7) contact person for the University’s Centre for Sustainability and Ecological Transition. He holds an M.Sc. in Energy Engineering, received in 2011, and a Ph.D. in Energy, obtained in 2015 with a thesis entitled “Building integrated phase change materials energy storage: experimental studies, modelling and parametric analysis”. His research focuses on sustainability in the building and energy sector, life cycle assessment of buildings and energy technologies, building physics, building simulation and low-carbon and renewable energy technologies. He is Operating Agent of IEA EBC Annex 83 “Positive Energy Districts”, after previously acting as Subtask C leader, and Co-Chair of IWG5 (SET Plan) on Energy Efficiency in Buildings. He is also the contact person for the Technopole research unit at the University of Palermo. He has been principal investigator and project manager in several projects related to Positive Energy Districts, with a focus on energy-efficient, low-carbon and renewable-based urban systems. His work addresses energy performance assessment, environmental evaluation and innovative technologies supporting the transition towards sustainable buildings and districts. He is the author of approximately 200 publications, including journal papers, books and conference proceedings.Francesco Reda, with extensive experience in R&D, innovation program design, and international collaboration, he supports organisations in navigating complex innovation landscapes and accelerating the transition from research to real-world impact. He leads international ventures that combine public funding and corporate resources, focusing on technology transfer, industrial transformation, and sustainable growth. His work bridges research and business, strengthening the connection between innovation development and market adoption. He actively collaborates with EU and national agencies on innovation programs and contributes to shaping the European R&I agenda, while engaging in key initiatives such as A.SPIRE, the Clean Hydrogen partnership, EERA, and the IEA Greenhouse Gas TCP.Xingxing Zhang is a full Professor in energy technology at Dalarna University, Sweden. He has multidisciplinary research in buildings, energy systems, and data analytics. He is active in EU research networks, by working in national projects, Nordic energy research projects, JPI Urban Europe and DUT projects, CETP projects, H2020 projects, EU cost action and IEA tasks. He is the EU expert of ‘Scalable Cities’ programme about digitalization of urban energy system and application of AI on smart cities. He ranks as one of the top 2% scientists since 2021. He has published 6 books, 10 chapters and over 190 peer-reviewed journal papers as well as 10 patents. He serves as subject editor of ‘Building Simulation’, ‘Energy and Built Environment’, and editorial board member of several journals.Rosaria Volpe is a Tenure-Track researcher affiliated with the Department of Electrical, Electronics and Computer Engineering at the University of Catania, Italy. She received a Ph.D. in “Systems, Energy, Computer and Telecommunications Engineering” from the University of Catania in 2018. She was Visiting Researcher at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Biorefinery Processes (BIORP), San Sebastian-Eibar, Bilbao, Spain, where she conducted experimental studies on the energy yield of pyrolysis processes. She was Visiting Researcher at the Tokyo City University in Japan, where she considered the potential impact of PEDs in Asian countries. Her research refers to energy systems modelling, energy management and control, with a focus on Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) and Positive Energy Districts (PEDs). She collaborates with a network of European and international partner institutions on several projects including DUT, CETP and H2020, along with IEA tasks participation. She is one of the leaders of the Subtask C “Organizing principles and impact assessment” of the IEA EBC Annex 83 “Positive Energy Districts”. She is an active contributor to the Q1 scientific literature and is part of the editorial board member of several journals.Ursula Eicker is the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Smart, Sustainable and Resilient Communities and Cities, full Professor in the Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering (BCEE) Department and Founder and Director of the Next-Generation Cities Institute at Concordia University in Montréal. She works on decarbonization strategies for cities using urban digital twins for scenario modeling, on neighborhood scale living labs and design and operation or renewable energy systems. Prof. Eicker is a German physicist with a Ph.D. in Solid State Physics from Heriot-Watt University and a Habilitation in Renewable Energy Systems at Berlin Technical University. She has held leadership positions at Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences and its Centre for Sustainable Energy Technologies and led many international research projects in the fields of building energy efficiency and renewable energy supply systems. Her current research interests focus on zero emission, sustainable and smart cities, integrating renewable energy sources and increasing urban livability. With a team of over 50 graduate students and software developers she is working on multiple living lab and eco-district projects in Canada and builds the urban modeling and data analytics platform Tools4Cities. To engage users, 3D city models can be accessed via web interfaces or immersive gamification tools. In November 2020, Eicker founded Concordia’s Next-Generation Cities Institute, which groups 14 university research centres and 200 researchers from all faculties. The Institute addresses the challenges of urban transformation with a transdisciplinary approach and develops tools and strategies for a sustainable future. Prof. Eicker has published 8 books, 21 book contributions, over 190 Peer-Reviewed Papers and more than 350 Conference Papers.Matthias Haase is an experienced engineer with many realized sustainable façade design and BIPB projects and coordinator of several EU projects (FP7, H2020, Horizon Europe) with degrees in Mechanical Engineering (BSc and Dipl.-Ing. from England and Germany), sustainable resource management (MEng from Germany) and Architecture (PhD from Hong Kong). Since Sep 2020 Matthias is Professor for Building Systems and Sustainable Resource Management at the Institute of Facility Management at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW). Since more than 30 years Matthias has been working in industry and academia in many national and international projects as project leader and manager with focus on sustainable solutions in the built environment. He is teaching and doing research in the areas of renewable energy, energy efficiency, building simulation, sustainable building design and operation, Energy Master Planning, business models for decarbonizing buildings and districts, as well as strategies in sustainability, energy management, and circular economy management. Matthias is author of a large number of publications on energy efficient planning and design, and is national expert on IEA EBC Annexes, Director-at-large of the International Building Performance Simulation Association (IBPSA), chair of IBPSA Project Committee as well as founding board member and President of IBPSA-Nordic, the Nordic part of IBPSA (covering Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland). He is editor of several journals (including Journal of Green Building) as well as reviewer and guest editor to several international journals (Energy and Buildings, Applied Energy, Energies, etc.).
