Chiara Garau Assistant Professor

University of Cagliari, Italy

Chiara Garau is an assistant professor (Tenure track position) in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Cagliari (Department of Civil Environmental Engineering and Architecture, DICAAR). She is graduated in Architectural Engineering (2003) and in Communication Science (2013) both with 110/110 summa cum laude (equivalent to First class honours). Since then, she has actively continued post graduate research, holding a II level University Master Degree in Business Intelligence (December 2005), and a PhD in Land Engineering and Urban Planning (January 2008).

She was a member of the scientific and organizing committee of the YA AESOP (Young Academics - Association of European Schools of Planning [2011 -2013]); she was a scientific and technical adviser to Observatory Smart Cities of Rome (2013-2014) and she was also selected by Regional Studies Association (RSA) and by the Committee of the Regions (CoR) to be part of the OPEN DAYS 2014 UNIVERSITY MASTER CLASS (ODU-MC) on EU cohesion policy.

In June 2015 she obtained the Best paper award at ICCSA 2015 with the manuscript entitled Benchmarking Smart Urban Mobility: A Study on Italian Cities.

She was also selected as international scientist by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to be part of the programme “Science Tour 2016: City of the Future – Research for Sustainable Urban Development” (Germany, 31 January-5 February 2016).

In March 2017 she obtained the national scientific qualification as Associate Professor and in June 2021 she obtained the national scientific qualification as Full Professor for the Scientific Disciplinary Sector ICAR/20 (Urban and Regional Planning).

In May 2019 she was recognised as a high-level academic by the European Commission s Directorate-General for Regional and Urban policy and she was selected by the European Community to be part - the only representative for Italy - of the project evaluation jury RegioStars 2019 together with great experts and academics in the field of smart cities.

From August 2020 to October 2020, she was visiting professor at the Centre for Advanced Studies in Urban Science and Design (CASUS) research centre, University of Groningen, the Netherlands.

In May 2022 she was visiting professor at Trinity College, Dublin (Ireland) and In July 2022 she was visiting professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban (South Africa).

Currently, she is a member of the scientific and/or organizational international committee of the following scientific communities:

ICCSA https://iccsa.org/;

Smart blue cities, https://www.smartbluecity.com/scientific-committee;

REAL CORP [http://www.corp.at]

Over the years she has been a reviewer for financing international projects, among which, the European Research Council Executive Agency s commissioned the evaluation of a project proposal under the ERC Starting Grant - Call 2020.

Her main research interests are focused on issues of the Scientific Disciplinary Sector of Urban and Regional Planning, particularly on smart cities; participatory processes; cultural heritage; urban governance and urban policies.

A referee of several international scientific journals, she is author of over one hundred and ten scientific publications, including monographs, conference proceedings, articles in books, national and international journals.

Personal website

https://unica.it/unica/en/ateneo_s07_ss01_sss01.page?contentId=SHD30724