Prof. Ajla Akšamija, PhD, LEED AP BD+C, CDT, FTI Fellow

University of Utah, School of Architecture

Dr. Ajla Akšamija is a Professor at the School of Architecture, University of Utah. She is a Distinguished Chair for Resilient Places and directs Transforming Places, Practices and Pedagogies Collaborative (TP3C) research entity. Her research expertise includes building science and sustainability, high-performance buildings, emerging building technologies, and innovations in architecture. Her extensive professional background includes a global design firm Perkins&Will, where she directed Building Technology Laboratory (“Tech Lab”), one of the first practice-driven architectural research laboratories. Her professional work includes complex building types, such as healthcare facilities, higher-education buildings, research laboratories, schools, commercial and civic buildings. Dr. Akšamija authored three books, Research Methods for the Architectural Profession (Routledge, 2021), Integrating Innovation in Architecture: Design, Methods and Technology for Progressive Practice and Research (John Wiley & Sons, 2016), and Sustainable Facades: Design Methods for High-Performance Building Envelopes (John Wiley & Sons, 2013). She contributed to several other books; has written numerous research articles and invited papers and has presented at various national and international conferences. She is the founder the Perkins and Will Research Journal, the first peer-reviewed research journal coming from the architectural profession and served as its editor for fourteen years. She currently serves as the President of the Facade Tectonics Institute.

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	Todor Stojanovski, PhD KTH Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm
I finished my postdoc at the Embodied Social Agents Lab (ESAL), the division for Computational Science and Technology (CST) where I work with digitizing urban design, City Information Modelling (CIM) and Urban Mobility Certificates (UMC). My current research looks at the effect of urban form (as design/morphological elements) on multimodal travel (competition between walking, cycling, public transportation and private car). I hold a PhD in Urban and Regional Studies at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. My research focuses on urban form and mobility, urban design and transportation infrastructures, habitation and mobility (sub)cultures. I have worked on research projects about urban form and transportation, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and Transit-Oriented Development (TOD). I have a Licentiate of Engineering (teknologie licentiatexamen) in Infrastructure and MSc (magisterexamen) in Built Environment (Environmental Engineering and Sustainable Infrastructure) from KTH Royal Institute of Technology. My background is architecture. I graduated (diplomiran inzinjer arhitekt) at the Faculty of Architecture at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University (http://www.arh.ukim.edu.mk) in Skopje, Macedonia. * * * * *
	Marija Nefovska-Danilović, PhD University of Belgrade, Faculty of Civil Engineering
Dr Marija Nefovska-Danilović is an Associate professor at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, University of Belgrade. She has been a member of the Chair for Engineering mechanics and theory of Structures at the Faculty of Civil Engineering since 1997. Her research expertise includes development of advanced models of plates and shells in structural dynamics based on the dynamic stiffness method, dynamic soil-structure interaction, traffic-induced vibrations and vibration serviceability of floors. In the past three years, the focus of her research has been directed toward human-induced vibrations of cross-laminated timber floors and searching for solutions for the development of vibration resistant cross-laminated timber floors designed for spanning large open space areas in commercial and residential buildings. She participated in several national research projects. Currently, she is a project coordinator of the research project “Towards Sustainable Buildings: Novel Strategies for the Design of Vibration Resistant Cross-Laminated Timber Floors” funded by the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia (2022-2025), and member of the COST Action CA20139 “Holistic design of taller timber buildings” (HELEN). Her professional expertise includes structural design of hydrotechnical structures and vibration serviceability assessment of structures subjected to dynamic excitation induced by traffic and humans. * * * * *

Prof. Vlatko Šešov, PhD

Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Engineering Seismology - IZIIS, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje

Prof. Vlatko Sesov, PhD (male) has been working at IZIIS since 1994. His research interests are: soil dynamics, liquefaction and its remediation, local site effects, seismic zonation, physical modelling and model testing. Vlatko Sesov was doctoral and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tokyo, Japan (2003 – 2005), visiting professor at the Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany (2008 – 2009), Fulbright research scholar , University of California, Davis (2013-2014), САД, visiting professor “ROSE School”, IUSS, Pavia, Италија (2020). He is former President of Macedonian Geotechnical Society and Macedonian member of Technical Committee (TC203) Earthquake Geotechnical Engineering and Associated Problems of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, ISSMGE and European committee for standardization Technical Committee TC 250 Eurocodes. Prof. Sesov has been participating in numerous European projects: CRISIS – Comprehensive RISk assessment of basic services and transport InfraStructure – CRISIS (2020-2022) as Coordinator, INFRA-NAT – Increased Resilience of Critical Infrastructure to Natural and Human-Induced Hazards (2018-2019) as national coordinator. Intense activities in European projects has been confirnmed with appoinment as National Contact Point (NCP) in Widening Participation and ERA , Horizon Europe. Currently Prof. Sesov has position as Director of the Institute.

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