Chair: Professor Glyn Davis

Professor Davis is the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne.

He holds a Doctorate of Philosophy from the Australian National University. He undertook postgraduate appointments as a Harkness Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, the Brookings Institution in Washington and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He publishes on public policy and is co-author of The Australian Policy Handbook, now in its fifth edition.

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Professor Kate Auty

Kate is widely known for her work on climate change, law and with Aboriginal communities. Kate was Commissioner for Environmental Sustainability, Victoria (2009-2014), Chair Ministerial Reference Council Climate Change Adaptation from 2008-2010, Member of the Premier's Advisory Council on Climate Change Victoria 2009-2010. She was a former Magistrate in Victoria and in Western Australia. She is currently Chair Advisory Board for National Electronic Collaborative Tools and Research (NeCTAR), Chair University of Melbourne Advisory Board Melbourne Sustainable Societies Institute (MSSI).

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Marita Cheng

Marita is Founder of 2Mar Robotics and founder and board member of Robogals. Robogals has grown to 31 chapters, and taught robotics to over 40,000 girls. Robogals was internationally recognized in 2011 as a leading youth social initiative through the International Youth Foundation YouthActionNet Fellowship and as a leading program for encouraging young women into engineering and technology. She was 2012 Young Australian of the Year. Marita is an experienced digital start-up entrepreneur.

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Tracey Fellows

Tracey Fellows is Chief Executive Officer of ASX-listed REA Group, responsible for the Group’s operations and investments in Australia and international markets.

REA Group is a digital advertising business specialising in property. It owns and operates Australia’s leading residential and commercial property sites, realestate.com.au and realcommercial.com.au, as well as property sites in Italy, Luxembourg, France and China.

The Group also has strategic investments in Move Inc., a leading digital real estate advertising business in the United States, and iProperty Group, which operates real estate advertising portals across South-East Asia.

Prior to joining REA Group in August 2014, Tracey was Executive General Manager of Communication Management Services at Australia Post, responsible for the physical and digital mail business which encompassed 13,000 employees.

Previously, Tracey was based in Singapore as Microsoft Vice-President for the Asia-Pacific region, responsible for sales, services, and marketing across 12 countries. Prior to this, Tracey was Managing Director of Microsoft Australia for four years and also served on the ninemsn board. Tracey has also held senior roles with Dell and IBM.

Born in Canada, Tracey holds a Bachelor of Economics from Monash University and a Postgraduate Diploma of Banking Management from the Macquarie Graduate School of Management. She lives in Melbourne with her husband Ian and son Jake.

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Maria Katsonis

Maria is the Director, Equality in the Department of Premier and Cabinet where she provides policy advice for the Minister for Equality and the Victorian Government. She is experienced in strategy, policy development and public administration. She is a Public Policy Fellow at the Melbourne School of Government, University of Melbourne, and a mental health advocate with beyondblue and Mental Health Australia. She is the author of The Good Greek Girl and has been published in The Age and The Guardian.

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Rob McGauran

Rob McGauran is the Founding Director of MGS Architects and Adjunct Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Monash University. He serves as Vice President and Chapter and National Councillor of the Royal Australia Institute of Architects. He is also a member of the Ministerial Advisory Committee for Fishermans Bend. Mr McGauran serves as Chairperson for the Sullivans Cove Waterfront Authority Design Panel and has been a member of the State Government's Priority Development Panel, a sessional member of Planning Panels Victoria, and Chairman of the Architects Registration Board of Victoria. Mr. McGauran serves as a Director at Housing Choices Australia. He has also been a member of numerous government advisory committees and review panels. Mr. McGauran was awarded a Life Fellowship to the RAIA in 1999 for contributions to the Profession.

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Carlton Connect Initiative

The Carlton Connect Initiative (CCI) is creating Australia’s premier innovation precinct anchored by the University of Melbourne. As an open platform, CCI unites talented people who extend and deepen the application of knowledge throughout the Australian economy.

At the CCI we:

• Actively bring together people from diverse disciplines to co-locate in one precinct
• Create and curate partnerships inside and outside our immediate environment – locally, nationally and globally
• Pursue new technologies as a means of harnessing the overlaps between research streams and industry sectors
• Provide the next generation of innovation leaders with a new way to navigate the challenges facing our region
• Invite communities of people through our front door to discover and connect

CCI is committed to the proactive development of a world-class innovation precinct with two key characteristics – a vibrant central place and a bias for collaborative impact. This confluence will turn the talent and energy of people from academia, business, and all levels of government into outcomes that will improve people’s lives and create new careers.

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Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities

The Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities (CRCWSC) is an Australian Government initiative established to develop strategies and solutions to some of the complex challenges many cities are facing associated with population growth, rapid expansion, climatic extremes of floods, drought and heat, and degrading environmental quality. The CRCWSC is responding to these issues by taking a contemporary and integrated approach in research and research-to-practice partnerships across more than 20 disciplines collaborating and engaging with industry leaders from all levels of government, water utilities, the land development sector and private enterprises.

The water sensitive city strategies and solutions we are researching and developing are aimed at improving quality of life, enhancing water supply security, reducing public health hazards from water-borne diseases, providing resource and environmental protection, and strengthening the economic productivity of cities and towns. These are achieved through delivering multi-functional infrastructure, including ecological landscapes that enhance ecosystem services and the connections people have with water.

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Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute (MSSI)

The Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute (MSSI), aims to facilitate and enable research linkages, projects and conversations leading to increased understanding of sustainability and resilience trends, challenges and solutions. The MSSI approach includes a particular emphasis on the contribution of the social sciences and humanities to understanding and addressing sustainability and resilience challenges.

Goals: To enable and support

• University of Melbourne, Australian and international research linkages and partnerships
• Development and implementation of interdisciplinary research projects
• Production and dissemination of high impact publications and research findings
• Post graduate research and learning
• Public engagement and debate

Focus

While MSSI maintains a strong commitment to working with researchers across the full spectrum of sustainability related research disciplines and issues, the Institute work program over the next two years will be focused on the following research clusters:

• Future Cities
• Climate Transformations
• Sustainability in the Anthropocene

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RMIT Centre for Urban Research

The RMIT University Centre for Urban Research is directly responding to the globally important need to shape cities that are environmentally, socially and economically sustainable.

We are strongly committed to inter-disciplinary research, with staff expertise in urban planning, geography, economics, environmental sciences, history, and sociology.

We undertake critical applied and policy-relevant research across seven intersecting programs:

• Beyond Behaviour Change
• Climate Change and Resilience
• Critical Urban Governance
• Housing and Urban Economies
• Interdisciplinary Conservation Science
• Planning and Transport for City Regions
• Urban Cultures and Technologies

The Centre has emerged as a leading urban research hub in Australia, hosting more than 40 staff, 40 members and 33 PhD students.

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Swinburne University

Swinburne has an international reputation for quality research that connects science and technology with business and the community. Our commitment to high-quality teaching and research is reflected in our rankings in a number of prestigious world academic ranking lists.

We also rate highly for educational experience in The Good Universities Guide, Australia's only comprehensive degree and university ratings guide.

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The Conversation

The Conversation is delighted to partner with the City of Melbourne for the development of the Future Melbourne 2026 Plan.

The Conversation was launched in Melbourne March 2011 and since then we have expanded to Africa, France, the UK and the United States to create a global news network. Our mandate is to provide an independent source of news and views, sourced from the academic and research community, direct to the public on a not for profit basis.

Each week we will curate our top five articles on a range of topics from our previous publications that are relevant to the conversations occurring on this website. We hope these articles will get you thinking about the future, inform your discussions and most of all we hope they will inspire your big ideas for the future of our great city.

The Conversation is an independent source of news and views, sourced from the academic and research community and delivered direct to the public.

Our team of professional editors work with university, CSIRO and research institute experts to unlock their knowledge for use by the wider public.

Access to independent, high-quality, authenticated, explanatory journalism underpins a functioning democracy. Our aim is to allow for better understanding of current affairs and complex issues. And hopefully allow for a better quality of public discourse and conversations.

Since our launch in March 2011, we’ve grown to become one of Australia’s largest independent news and commentary sites. Around 35% of our readers are from outside Australia.

We believe in open access and the free-flow of information. The Conversation is a free resource: free to read (we’ll never go behind a paywall), and free to share or republish under Creative Commons. All you need to do is follow our simple guidelines. We have also become an indispensable media resource: providing free content, ideas and talent to follow up for press, web, radio or TV.

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University of Melbourne

The University of Melbourne enjoys an outstanding reputation with world rankings consistently placing us as Australia’s leading comprehensive research-intensive university, and one of the world’s top 50.

Melbourne attracts the best and brightest students and researchers and, with a history of over 160 years, we occupy a special place at the heart of our city’s cultural scene.

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Victorian Ecoinnovation Lab (VEIL)

The Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab (VEIL) seeks to identify and promote emerging technological, social, organisational and institutional innovations that could form part of future sustainable systems. VEIL works with stakeholders using participatory and design-led methodologies to provide a radical alternative set of possibilities –future visions- that extend beyond incremental change. These future visions are used to ‘seed’ vision-driven projects for short-term development and to identify emerging disruptive innovations that could be precursors of change. VEIL is lead by Chris Ryan who is the Professor of Urban Eco-innovation at Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne. Prof. Chris Ryan has worked for over 30 years across various areas of science, technology, environmental policy and design, and in projects that span the community sector, academia, government and international agencies and business.

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Victoria University

Victoria University (VU) was founded in 1916 as Footscray Technical School. After successive mergers with TAFE colleges across Melbourne's western suburbs, Victoria University of Technology was established in 1990, and renamed Victoria University in 2005.

Today, VU is one of the largest and most culturally diverse education institutions in Australia, and one of only five multi-sector universities offering vocational education (TAFE) and higher education courses.

VU now has more than 48,000 enrolled students, which includes more than 13,400 international students studying our courses onshore or with our partner institutions offshore. More than 2,400 academics, teaching and general staff join with the University’s students to make VU a university that is excellent, engaged and accessible.

VU maintains strong links with local communities, government and industry, and is distinctive because of its transformational role in improving the lives of people and communities, especially in the western metropolitan region of Melbourne.

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