Urban Heat Network

Emma Maria Rossi

Vienna, Austria

2026/27 Intern

Emma Maria is an MSc student in Socio-Ecological Economics and Policy at WU Vienna, where her research focuses on urban heat vulnerability and the social dimensions of climate adaptation. Emma ‘s internship for the ‘Global URBAN HEAT Media Lab’ pilot relates to questions driving her research: how cities identify who is most exposed to extreme heat, and how that knowledge translates into more equitable adaptation.

Read more about Emma Maria’s work during her Pedestrian Space internship here: https://pedestrianspace.org/tag/emma-maria-rossi/

Zayaan Delawalla

Brussels, Belgium // Karachi, Pakistan

2026/27 Intern

Zayaan has a background from his undergraduate work in Karachi on maternal and child health at the intersection of climate change, and experience working on multiple projects focusing on urban and rural disasters, including but not limited to extreme heat. He is currently based in Brussels, pursuing a Master’s of Urban Studies at VUB. His internship in the Global URBAN HEAT Media Lab will reflect the reality of unprecedented recent heat waves in Europe, increasing the relevance of extreme heat in urban practice and discourse on this continent as well.

Sonora Ward

Belgium, Brussels // Santa Cruz, California, USA

2026/27 Intern

Sonora Ward is a VUB MSc Urban Studies student and Global Studies graduate specializing in Sustainability science and dedicated to issues of climate change and social injustice, specializing in community-centered approaches to socio-environmental transformations.’  Her current focus is on how Nature-based Solutions can be co-designed in socially inequitable contexts to act as climate shelters for vulnerable residents, an emphasis aligning with the ‘Global URBAN HEAT Media Lab’ focus on heat’s relationship to meaningful green transitions and local and planetary health.

Read more about Sonora’s work during her Pedestrian Space internship here: https://pedestrianspace.org/tag/sonora-ward/

Alisher Kulzhabayev

2026/27 Intern

Alisher is a research assistant at York University, with an academic and research background centered on urban planning, public space, transportation, and community well-being. His research has led to a development of interest in how the built environment shapes everyday experiences and how planning can support more resilient and inclusive communities. He is particularly interested in exploring urban heat through the intersections of public space, mobility, built form, and nature, and contributing a planning and research perspective to Pedestrian Space’s Sustainable Urbanism & Planetary Health initiative.

Read more about Alisher’s work during his Pedestrian Space internship here: https://pedestrianspace.org/tag/alisher-kulzhabayev/

Gunjit Verma

Paris, France

Gunjit is currently a second-year Master’s student at Sciences Po Urban School. He is interested in disaster and climate risk and how we can make cities more resilient to such increasingly unpredictable catastrophes. He believes that cities are the places where the fight against climate change will be won or lost, viewing the Media Lab activity as offering a fresh view on urban heat resilience, focusing not solely on infrastructural solutions but actually centering the community at its forefront with education, engagement, and experiences. 

For Gunjit, this means actually making communities aware that heatwaves are not a technical problem to be done away with, but to also focus on social cohesion networks to ensure people have the aid, information and cooperation needed to endure through them and that communities are in lockstep in the disaster management structure from bottom to the top, so that policies are implemented in letter.

He joins the Global URBAN HEAT Media Lab with interest in contributing geospatial maps and research briefs.

Yusra Gul

New Delhi, India

Yusra Gul is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, and a practicing architect with over 13 years of professional experience. She is currently pursuing her PhD, focusing on urban heat stress mitigation in informal and unauthorized settlements.

Her research lies at the intersection of architecture, urbanism, and climate change, with interests in urban heat, thermal vulnerability, settlement morphology, climate-responsive design, and community-based adaptation. Her methodological interests include GIS, remote sensing, land surface temperature analysis, and integrating environmental data with residents’ lived experiences.

Iqra Fatima

2026 Intern

Iqra Fatima is an undergraduate student pursuing a B.A. (Hons.) in Geography with a Minor in Economics at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. For her internship, she is interested in the production of heat-related disciplinary insights and bringing in a geographical and climate-focused perspective via a location-based case study, focusing on Delhi as a metropolitan city and the intersection of climate, urban geography, and urban heat.

Read more about Iqra’s work during her Pedestrian Space internship here: https://pedestrianspace.org/tag/iqra-fatima/

Arghyadip Hatua

Ahmedabad, India

Walkability Correspondent | Urban Mobility & Public Space Advocate

Arghyadip is a passionate urban mobility and public space advocate, working for safer, more walkable, inclusive, and people-friendly cities. As a Walkability Correspondent for Pedestrian Space, he delves into the relationships between pedestrians, sustainable mobility, public transport, the environment, heritage, and urban design.

Born and raised in Kolkata but currently living in Ahmedabad, he has unique perspective on two different cities and is an active advocate for pedestrians, safer streets, bicycle commuting, and sustainable public transport. In Kolkata, he focuses on revitalizing the public transport system and reviving the state-owned tram network.

His professional interests centre on accessible, mixed-use, and mixed-density centers and the role of the public realm in encouraging alternative transportation such as walking, public transport, and cycling. Argho believes that the creation of a fit-for-purpose public realm is a fundamental requirement for healthy public life and bringing down the carbon footprint of transport systems in cities.

Priyanshu Joshi

Patiala, India

2026/27 Intern

Priyanshu is a B.Tech Civil Engineering student at Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, with a growing interest in urban planning, infrastructure, mobility, and climate resilience. His interest in the URBAN HEAT pilot relates to how the built environment, infrastructure, mobility, and public spaces influence people’s exposure to and experience of heat, and how urban planning can respond to these challenges. Coming from a civil engineering background, he is interested in approaching urban heat from an infrastructure and urban-systems perspective while exploring how spatial and remote-sensing approaches can complement observations of the built environment and people’s everyday experiences, rather than looking at heat purely through technical measurements. Through the internship, he hopes to develop a research direction around urban heat and resilience in Indian cities, learning from perspectives across different disciplines, and contributing to collaborative research, case studies, and media outputs within the Global URBAN HEAT Media Lab.

Mahkameh Rezaeisalim

Tehran, Iran

2026/27 Intern

Mahkameh is an interdisciplinary urban researcher based in Tehran with interests in urban health, walkability, participation, and women’s experiences of the city. She joins the ‘Global URBAN HEAT Media Lab’ with an interest in pairing her research in resilience and health with her current work on flânerie and urban experience, and shaping a research path to include urban heat. She is also interested in how heat resilience intersects with gendered experiences of public space in Iran and shaping awareness of ancient Iranian cooling approaches to mitigate heat.

Read more about Mahkameh’s work for her Pedestrian Space internship here: https://pedestrianspace.org/tag/mahkameh-rezaeisalim/

Sabeeh Farhan

Al-Kut District, Iraq

Dr. Farhan is Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning and Vice President for Scientific Affairs at the University of Wasit, Iraq. His work focuses on sustainable urbanism, urban resilience, outdoor thermal comfort, historic cities, public spaces, community participation, and digital environmental assessment. He has particular experience studying the complex relationship between climate, pedestrian movement, urban morphology, cultural heritage, and large seasonal gatherings in Iraqi historic and religious cities, especially Karbala and Najaf. Karbala represents a distinctive context where extreme summer heat, walkability, historic urban form, religious heritage, mass gatherings, and community adaptation intersect. He is interested in the opportunity to bring an Iraqi perspective to an international, place-based educational network.

Maureen Nyambura

Nairobi, Kenya

2026/27 Intern

Nairobi-based Maureen is an Urban Planning Consultant at Kreis Spatial Planning & Consulting and graduate in Environmental Planning and Management (EPM). She is also certified as a National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) Associate Expert and, through her work, sees how rapid development impacts local urban microclimates. She is interested in how we can use climate-responsive spatial design and green infrastructure to protect pedestrian spaces from rising thermal stress in sub-Saharan African cities.

Serena Claggett

Leiden, Netherlands

2026/27 Intern

Serena is a bachelor’s student at Leiden University in the Netherlands, studying sociology with an emphasis on sustainable communities and a minor in economics. Serena reflected that as an intern for the Pedestrian Space ‘Global URBAN HEAT Media Lab’ project, she plans to develop knowledge that can make a difference in how people interact with their environments and refine her advocacy efforts for climate justice, urban mobility, and community development in embedded local contexts.

Read more about Serena’s work during her Pedestrian Space internship here: https://pedestrianspace.org/tag/serena-claggett/

Anushey Tahir

Lahore, Pakistan

Anushey is a 2026 in LMUS Political Science graduate. Her thesis examined how shrine redevelopment reshapes access to and control over public and sacred urban space. As part of this URBAN HEAT Media Lab, she intends to explore the relationship between heritage conservation in Lahore and urban heat. While current heritage preservation initiatives focus more on surface-level modernisation or commercialisation of historic or sacred spaces, she hopes to ask whether Lahore’s historic architecture already embodies climate-responsive design that contemporary planning can learn from. Through fieldwork around shrines, she observed how shaded courtyards, trees, verandahs and narrow pedestrian spaces continued to shape how people navigated these spaces during periods of intense heat or floods (monsoon season). Rather than viewing heritage solely through the lens of conservation and modernisation, she also documents it as a form of climate infrastructure, highlighting how traditional urban design can contribute to more walkable, resilient, and thermally comfortable spaces, and what authorities can do to preserve this infrastructure, which seems to be weakening every passing year due to global warming and climate change.

Muhammad Tariq

Peshawar, Pakistan

Muhammad is an architect and Assistant Professor working at the intersection of architecture, urban ecology, and climate-responsive design. His work focuses on urban heat, nature-based cooling, and climate-responsive planning, including Talash-e-Saya, a place-based initiative exploring indigenous cooling wisdom in Pakistan. He is interested in the URBAN HEAT pilot as an opportunity to develop practical, place-based heat education for architecture students and practitioners.

Yiheng Ye

London, UK // Wenzhou, China

2026 Intern

Yiheng is a student in the Sustainable Built Environment, Energy, and Resources programme at UCL in London. His academic background is in developing sustainable cities through the perspectives of environmental and social sustainability, with a specialization in building energy and urban climatology. With his work in the ‘Global URBAN HEAT Media Lab’, he plans to gather perspectives on urban heat and its effects on mobility and lived experience in East Asian geographical contexts, which presents the need for unique and localized solutions to the effects of extreme urban heat.

Read more about Yiheng’s work during his Pedestrian Space internship here: https://pedestrianspace.org/tag/yiheng-ye/

Eva Chauveau

Atlanta, Georgia, USA

2026/27 Intern

Eva is an Urban Planner in Atlanta, Georgia, and an MSc student in Global Development at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She has been specifically focusing on urban heat in the Metro Atlanta area and is working on an Urban Heat Mitigation and Action Plan for DeKalb County and views the network as an amazing learning opportunity to better understand how to
synthesize strategies for regions facing an urban heat crisis.

Read more about Eva’s work during her Pedestrian Space internship https://pedestrianspace.org/tag/eva-chauveau/

Bryant Leung

Irvine, California, USA

Intern

Bryant is an undergraduate student in Urban Studies at the University of California, Irvine, with academic and professional interests in sustainable urbanism, urban design, climate resilience, and the relationship between the built environment and public well-being. His work examines how planning and design interventions can reduce exposure to extreme heat, strengthen climate adaptation, and create more equitable, livable communities—particularly in Southern California and other rapidly urbanizing regions.

Through the Global URBAN HEAT Media Lab, Bryant intends to investigate how extreme urban heat is experienced in everyday life and how those experiences vary across neighborhoods, social groups, and geographic contexts. He aims to document the connections among urban form, mobility, access to shade and cooling, housing conditions, and environmental inequity, while communicating these findings through accessible visual and media-based storytelling. Ultimately, he hopes the lab will help him develop a stronger foundation for graduate study in architecture and planning and contribute to locally grounded design and policy strategies that make cities cooler, healthier, and more resilient.

Read more about Bryant’s work during his Pedestrian Space internship here: https://pedestrianspace.org/tag/bryant-leung/

Julia Reich

New York City, New York, USA

2026/27 Intern

Julia is a master’s student at Columbia Climate School, where her focus is on climate adaptation and mitigation measures, such as public transportation implementation. For her internship with the Global URBAN HEAT Media Lab, she will be analyzing urban heat through a public transportation lens, incorporating elements of environmental justice, shaping awareness of how and what infrastructure can help reduce the harms of extreme heat, and analyzing previous NYC/NYS policy on reducing extreme heat compared to the current administration. She is also interested in creating auto-ethnographies of heat in specific NYC neighborhoods.

Read more about Julia’s work during her Pedestrian Space internship here: https://pedestrianspace.org/tag/julia-reich/