Professors

Professor André Torre

A doctor in economics and accredited to supervise research, he is currently research director at the INRA (National Institute for Agronomic Research), involved in Agro Paris Tech and guest lecturer in several French universities . His research was for a long time at the cross roads of spatial and industrial economics; It has in recent years become more multi-disciplinary and focused increasingly on questions related to land use planning and sustainable development processes. He have published many articles and a few books, mostly on issues related to space and coordination between people or groups of people. His research currently focuses on the analysis of proximity relations and on their importance in processes of coordination between people. It centres on two main areas: Local interactions between innovative firms and, more particularly, the role played by geographical proximity in the transfer of knowledge; Land use and neighbourhood conflicts. This multidisciplinary approach aims to identify and define conflicts, as well as the different ways of managing and solving them. His involvement in research administration has led me to take on the roles of Chairman of the ASRDLF (French Speaking Regional Science Association), of Director of the PSDR (For and About Regional development) research programs and of manager of the « Proximity team » of the UMR SAD-APT (INRA - Agro Paris Tech).

Professor John I. Carruthers

Dr. Carruthers is the Director of the Sustainable Urban Planning ProgramProgram Director, College of Professional Studies, The George Washington University. He holds a BA in Urban Studies from Hunter College, an MS in Planning from the University of Arizona, and a Ph.D. in Urban Design and Planning from the University of Washington.

Professor Peter Nijkamp

Peter Nijkamp (born in 1946, Dalfsen, The Netherlands) graduated from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, with a specialisation in the field of econometrics (1970). He holds a Ph.D. (cum laude) on new solution methods for non-linear mathematical programming models for industrial planning from the same university (1972). Since 1975 he is professor in regional and urban economics and in economic geography at the VU University, Amsterdam. His main research interests cover regional growth, quantitative plan evaluation, multicriteria analysis, regional and urban modelling, transport systems analysis, mathematical modelling of spatial systems, technological innovation, environmental and resource management and sustainable development. In his long research career he has focused his research in particular on quantitative methods for policy analysis, as well as on spatial-behavioural analysis of economic agents. He has a broad expertise in the area of public policy, services planning, infrastructure management and environmental protection. In all these fields he has published many books (monographs and edited volumes) and numerous articles, in both high ranking scientific journals and popular magazines. He has recently completed a 25-volume ‘opus’ on Classics in Regional, Transportation, Environmental and Planning Science. For several years Peter Nijkamp has played a leading role as president of the European Regional Science Association (1979-1989) and as president of the Regional Science Association International (1990-1992). He is founding father of the Network on European Communications and Transport Activity Research (NECTAR), a scientific organization of which he has been chairman for many years (1987-2001). He plays also an active role in several other international scientific networks and professional associations. He is past chairman of the board of the research school TRAIL, a collaborative research initiative of Delft University of Technology and Erasmus University Rotterdam, as well as of STELLA, a Transatlantic research network on sustainable transport research. He has been an advisor to several Dutch Ministries, regional and local policy councils, employers' organizations, private business firms, the Commission of the European Union (EU), the European Research Council (ERC), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the European Conference of Ministers in Transport (ECMT), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the European Roundtable of Industrialists, ICOMOS, the World Bank, and many other private and public institutions. He has been involved in the organization of numerous international conferences all over the world, in different fields of research, while he is also a regular guest speaker at international meetings. Peter Nijkamp is a member of approx. 30 editorial or advisory boards of scientific journals in the field. He supervised more than 80 Ph.D students, several of them holding at present a professorship in various countries. He is also past chairman of the Dutch Social Science Council (SWR) and past vice-president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences (KNAW). Until 2009, he was president of the governing board of the Netherlands Research Council (NWO). He is also past president of the European Heads of Research Councils (EUROHORCs). He has acted as a member of evaluation committees of several research initiatives or programmes in various countries (e.g., Belgium, Sweden, Japan, Austria). He was for many years member of the Council of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), and is also honorary IIASA scholar.

Professor Roberto Patuelli

Roberto Patuelli has a Bachelor in Statistics and Economics (University of Bologna, Italy), a Master's of Arts in Transportation Policy, Operations and Logistics (George Mason University, USA), and a Ph.D. in Economics (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands). He has worked in Belgium, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Switzerland and the USA, concentrating, over the years, on topics such as complex networks, regional employment forecasting, regional unemployment differentials, commuting networks and regional innovation processes. Methodologically, he is currently interested in spatial statistics and econometrics, in particular with applications to nonlinear and mixed methods. He is the local unit coordinator at the University of Bologna for a FIRB 2012 project on "Social and Spatial Interactions in the Accumulation of Civic and Human Capital", and one of the Editors of REGION, the journal of the European Regional Science Association (ERSA).

Professor Tomaz Ponce Dentinho

Tomaz Ponce Dentinho is the coordinator of the Group for Nature Conservation and Management at the Azores University, in Angra, Portugal, and member of the Research Centre for Applied Economics of the Atlantic based in Ponta Delgada. He is the promoter and coordinator of the Master on the Management of Nature Conservation and of the PhD on Interdisciplinary Management of the Landscape (joint PhD with the University of Évora and the Technical University of Lisbon. He is a lecturer on: economics (undergraduate); regional and urban economics (undergraduate, master and doctorate programmes), environmental economics (master), cost-benefit analysis (master) and agricultural economics (undergraduate). His research group, involving around ten researchers undertake studies on regional sustainable development, integrated water management, marine resources’ economics, agricultural economics and cost-benefit analysis. Since 2008, he chairs the Portuguese Association for Regional Development (www.apdr.pt). Since 2007 he is a member of the European Organizing Committee of the European Regional Science Association. Since 2010 he is a member of Council of the Regional Science Association International. He is Executive Director of the Regional Science Association International ( www.regionalscience.org ).