Cynthia Matta was completing her degree in Bachelor of Architecture at Notre Dame University, Lebanon, when she work on the UTB-MENA project in summer 2017. Throughout the years of her study in architecture, her research interest in public space and infrastructure planning strived. She spent the end of 2016 working for UN- Habitat Lebanon, where she gathered data for a field survey in the urban neighborhood of Nabaa, Lebanon.
Dr. Yehya Serag
Dr. Yehya Serag worked with the project team in 2017 to publish a joint paper on “neighborhood-scale urban form typologies of large metroplitan areas: observations on Istanbul, Cairo and Tehran”. He had a research stay at Center for Technology and Society of TU Berlin to work on the above topic. At the time of cooperation, At the time of the project, Yehya Serag (*1976) held the position of Associate Professor of urban and regional planning at the urban design and planning department at Ain Shams University while being on sabbatical leave to the Architectural Engineering department at the faculty of engineering and technology at the Future University in Egypt. He obtained his Master and PhD degrees from the University of Leuven in Belgium (KULeuven). His research interests include, urban and regional strategic planning, as well as the impacts of politics on urbanism and the built environment. He was involved in several academic cooperation initiatives with universities in both Belgium and Germany.
Haya Tabbakh
Haya Tabbakh is an aspiring urban planner who was born and raised in Aleppo, Syria. She made a shift from in her education career from interior design to urban planning in order to engage in the post-war reconstruction of Aleppo. At the time of her cooperation with the UTB-MENA project, she was finishing her Master’s in Urban Planning and Policy at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. She has experience working on large construction projects based in the Middle East and conducting urban-related researches.