Georgia Tech Associate Professor Perry Pei-ju Yang has been appointed Bayer Chair Professor for the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) – Tongji University, Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development (IESD).  As Bayer Chair, Yang will develop a strategic plan and an international platform for potential contributions to urban sustainability based on UNEP’s global network and Tongji University’s regional linkages to China’s urban development. The Bayer Chair Professorship is based on an IESD endowment of US$1million from the Bayer Group of companies, headquartered in Germany.

Yang is associate professor of city and regional planning and of architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology.  His appointment as Bayer Chair became official after he presented an outlook of the Bayer Chair Professorship to the President of the Bayer Greater China Group, in which he outlined a “10 Cities, 10 Years” vision by tracking radical urban transitions in China in the context that the country’s urban population will grow another 300 million in the next 15 years. Yang argued that the investigation of one Chinese city a year in the rapidly changing urban landscape would allow the Bayer Chair, in partnership with academic, professional, and business communities, to address issues created by an urbanizing world like healthy cities, aging society, eco-agriculture, the future of urban energy, and climate change.

In the spring of 2015 an international sustainable development studio, co-organized by Georgia Tech and Tongji University, will investigate Chongming Eco Island in Shanghai. This studio is the first-year pilot project supported by the Bayer Chair endowment. Yang will additionally co-organize the Bayer Forum on a sustainable urban future in March 2015; the UNEP International Students Conference on sustainability in Shanghai; and a symposium on ecological urban systems design in June 2015 with invited speakers from Georgia Tech, Tongji University, and local stakeholders.

“I see this Bayer Chair professorship as an addition to the Sino-US Eco Urban Lab, an initiative by Georgia Tech and Tongji University,” says Yang. “It extends our footprint to the UNEP network as well as the business community, which provides us a platform for collaboration in sustainable urban development in China and the Asian region.”

More detailed information on the Bayer Chair and the UNEP - Tongji Institute can be found here: http://unep-iesd.tongji.edu.cn/index.php?classid=1000