Abhigyan Singh is an Assistant Professor of Design Anthropology for Social Change at TU Delft and a Research Fellow at the AMS Institute. His research investigates the lived experiences of energy and climate transitions in neighborhoods across the Global North and South. He focuses on non-market value exchanges such as reciprocity and sharing and employs hybrid ethnographic methods to advance social design beyond neoliberal logics. Active in international design networks, Abhigyan serves on the Designing Editorial Board. His emerging work explores Indian philosophical perspectives and multi-species design. He holds a PhD from TU Delft, a Master’s in New Media Design from Aalto University (Finland), and a Bachelor’s from DA-IICT (India), with specialized anthropological training from the University of Amsterdam

Saurabh has a foundation and momentum with his contextual doctoral work in Indian Design, “Design Paradigms: A Postcolonial Design History of India”, exploring the Positions, Pedagogy and Projects of Design in Indian Higher Education institutions since Indian Independence. Through the years, he has focused on articulating Indian Design, developing case studies, theorising, and even contributing to global encyclopaedias on topics including Design History, Sustainability and Social Design. As an academic, he has guided several projects exploring the grounded and critical versions of design. Familiarity with the design education landscape as an academic with 14 years of experience as a design historian and communication designer enables him to do well in the proposed project. 

Jay Dhariwal is an Associate Professor in the Department of Design at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. His research focuses on design for health and wellness in the built environment and environmental sustainability, with expertise in building science, energy efficiency, and data driven approaches to thermal comfort and indoor air quality. He has led and collaborated on interdisciplinary projects including low cost air quality monitoring, CO2 mapping in indoor environments, and the development of affordable medical devices in collaboration with All India Institute of Medical Sciences Delhi. His work also examines urban heat vulnerability and thermal adaptation in diverse contexts. Previously, he was affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Leeds, where he worked on urban microclimate modelling and sustainable design.

Mert Akay is a PhD researcher at TU Delft with expertise in integrating big data and thick data using AI methodologies to address climate related challenges. Combining urban data science with machine anthropology, his research focuses on generating actionable insights for urban resilience, particularly in mitigating urban heat and heat vulnerability. In addition to receiving awards in national and international design competitions, he has contributed to several impactful projects and planning practices at local and national levels. 

Himani Kanojia is an urban designer and doctoral researcher at IIT Delhi, rethinking urban futures through children’s agency and participatory design. Her doctoral research investigates how children’s lived experiences and visual narratives can be brought into dialogue with urban systems and environmental data to inform climate-responsive planning. Situated within the Majority World context, her work explores methodological frameworks that integrate participatory design, drawing-based co-creation, and communication design to enable children’s agency in shaping urban futures. It further examines how such approaches can contribute to more inclusive, context-aware, and responsive design, planning, and policy practices for sustainable cities.