I am Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Sustainable Development and Planning and Programme Director for MSc Sustainable Urbanism at University College London in the UK. I see myself as an architect and social scientist, and I hold degrees in: public policy (PhD ,LSE 2010), housing (MSc Dist, LSE 2001 ), planning (MA Dist, UAUIM 1999) and architecture (BArch DipArch, UAUIM 1998). Prior to joining academia in 2010, I worked as an architect and urban consultant for 10 years. Before that, I held a lectureship position at the University of Architecture in Bucharest, where I also set up my own architectural practice, ZONA Architects. I am a registered architect with ARB (UK) and OAR (Romania), and a member of RIBA (UK).

I am an URBACT and EU expert; an academic examiner for University of Hertforshire and research evaluator for FORMAS and VINNOVA (Swedish Research Council); Norwegian Research Council; and ESRC, EPSRC and UKERC (UK Research Councils). I have been invited to lecture at Oxford University, London School of Economics, Stockholm Royal Institute of Technology, Gothenburg University, TU Delft, Columbia University, RMIT Melbourne, Seoul National University, TU Wroclaw Technical University, TU Berlin and University of Architecture Bucharest. To date, I have supervised five doctoral researchers and more that 40 MSc students.