Frank is an architect and urban designer, practicing as a partner with Urban Field Studio, based in San Francisco Bay area.  His work spans the United States with a focus on design of sustainable urban environments, including transport station districts, city neighborhoods, and greater downtown areas.  He has been working with the Deutsche Bahn team and the California High Speed Rail Authority for the past three years on station planning and urban design of transit-oriented development for six of the California stations.
 
Frank’s undergraduate education was in architecture at Princeton University and his graduate degrees are in architecture and city planning from the University of California, Berkeley.  Frank participates in the programs of the Urban Land Institute, the Mayor’s Institute on City Design, the American Institute of Architects, and numerous Design Awards Juries.  Frank has taught in the Architecture and Urban Design programs at the University of California, Berkeley and has lectured in Scandinavia and around the United States.

Maria Katticaran is a licensed architect and urban designer at HDR, focusing on community-centered, sustainable design. She has a career dedicated to transportation architecture and has helped shape mega-projects across North America, such as Union Station(LINK US) in Los Angeles, the Ontario Line in Toronto, Pittsburgh International Airport, etc. These projects reshape cities and create social infrastructure spaces, impacting the daily lives of millions.

Maria is deeply involved in her community. She serves on the Advisory Board of the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority, where she reviews grant proposals and advises on an annual $25 million allocation to climate-resilient projects. She also serves on the City of Oakland's Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board.

Maria is on the leadership of the AIA National Committee on Regional & Urban Design. Recently, she was awarded the AIA CA's 2024 Young Architect award. She is also part of ULI's Health Leaders Network.

Maria has published several articles and presented at numerous conferences, including The AIA Conference on Architecture & Design, where she presented on 'Co-Design Ethics in Action.'

Nico Larco, AIA, is an urban designer, architect, and professor. He leads ELEMENT/Urban Design, a design and consulting firm, and has been a Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Oregon since 2004 where he is also the Director of the Urbanism Next Center and Co-Director of the Sustainable Cities Institute. Since 2018, he has also been a Strategic Advisor and Researcher at TNO, a Dutch national think-tank.

Prof. Larco researches and teaches sustainable urban design, has developed the Sustainable Urban Design Framework, is the lead author of the Sustainable Urban Design Handbook published in 2024, and assists cities and projects on how best to apply these principles and approaches. His work around Urbanism Next is focused on how technological advances such as shared mobility, self-driving cars, e-commerce and the sharing economy are changing city form and development. Prof. Larco assists cities and projects in future-proofing to thrive amidst these advances, has run workshops and charrettes nationally and internationally on this topic, and has coordinated work in this area with various municipal and state agencies across North America and in Europe.

Prof. Larco has published in various academic and professional journals and his work has been covered by Wired, the New York Times, Fast Company, Bloomberg News, Forbes, the Financial Times of London, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. He was a Fulbright Scholar in 2012/13 in Spain at the Polytechnic University of Catalunya and at the University of Navarra, a Visiting Professor at TU Delft in 2018/19, and was a Fulbright Scholar in 2019 at the Pontificia Universidad Católica in Chile. He has testified on his research to the US Congress, has worked on research for the European Commission, and was a speaker at TEDx College Park.

Manuel Sanchez-Ruiz is an Architect - Urban Designer with over 35 years of experience in large land-planning of urban scale projects both domestically and internationally. His experience includes the design and planning of large-scale urban development projects, new communities, mixed-use districts, industrial parks, campus plans, waterfronts, and urban regeneration projects particularly in the USA, Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Working in an interdisciplinary collaboration among economics, planning, landscape, architecture, and engineering.

From 2010 to 2024, he served as a Principal at AECOM, a global infrastructure firm. Prior to that, he held Principal roles at Sasaki Associates, Escala International, and Gomez & Sanchez Architects, as well as Senior Urban Designer for the Central Artery Project in Boston with Wallace, Floyd, Associates, Inc. In May 2024, he launched his own consulting firm, MAS Urban Design Consulting, LLC.

Avinash is a Vice President and Global Director of the Center of Excellence for Urban Analytics at AECOM. Over the past 25 years in the industry, Avinash has been involved in innovation with the intersection of technology, strategic planning, and design with a holistic, data-driven approach. He has a bachelor’s degree in urban planning and a master’s degree in landscape architecture.

Avinash has worked on projects around the world and has specific experience in large scale master planning and urban design, smart city strategy, energy and infrastructure planning with a specialization in scenario planning, decision support with multi-criteria modeling and analytics, digital twins and visualizations/simulations for public, private sector and military clients. He is the chief architect of AECOM’s Sustainable Systems Integration Model (SSIM™) – an award winning digital tool for strategic master planning at site, city or regional scales and the Triple Bottom Line Model for comprehensive multi-criteria analysis for infrastructure and design projects.