Mir M. Ali is Professor Emeritus and former Chairman for 13 years of the Structures Division of the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is currently teaching there as an Adjunct Professor. Dr Ali is a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH). He was bestowed ASCE's Millennium Challenge Prize (1999). He received a Fulbright award (2008) to study the feasibility of constructing tall buildings from an urban design perspective in Malta.

Dr Ali was the Chairman of CTBUH's Committee 30-Architecture (1990-1998) and the Group Leader of its Group PA-Planning and Architecture (1998-2005) overseeing eight topical committees dealing with tall buildings and cities. He also served on CTBUH's several other committees and was the founding editor of the Council's CTBUH Journal (1999-2002). He has been interviewed on tall buildings by the New York Times, Toronto Star, Chicago Sun Times, Chicago Daily Herald, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The Architectural Record, Spectrum, Rolling Stones, Popular Science, Discovery Channel, Associated Press and several other newspapers, radio stations and television channels.

He was a TOKTEN Fellow of the United Nations (1989). He served as a member of the Advisory Committee, Strategic Transportation Planning (STP) appointed by the Government of Bangladesh (2003-2005). His considerable industrial experience includes Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Sargent & Lundy in Chicago. His consultancy work includes projects in Canada, Singapore, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates and the United States. He also worked as a consultant with the US Army Corps of Engineers. Books authored/co-authored and edited by him include Architecture of Tall Buildings; Art of the Skyscraper; Catalyst for Skyscraper Revolution; The Skyscraper and the City; and The Future of Tall Buildings.

Dr Ali published numerous papers on tall buildings, cities, sustainability and other topics, as well as gave seminars and invited lectures nationally in the United States and internationally.

Dr. Kheir Al-Kodmany is an Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Before joining the UIC faculty, Dr Al-Kodmany worked on tall building projects as an architectural designer for the Chicago firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. He won several international architectural and urban design competitions. His current academic research focuses on sustainable urban design, vertical density, infrastructure, and geospatial visualization applications for planners. He has developed 3D modeling, virtual reality, GIS, and webbased mapping survey tools and software for effective participatory planning and design. He also served as the Co-Director of the Urban Data Visualization Laboratory at UIC and has engaged many communities in using GIS.

Dr Al-Kodmany helped the Saudi Government in facilitating the performance of safe Hajj by applying visualization and crowd management techniques to reconfigure and expand the existing infrastructure to accommodate about three million pilgrims who travel to Mecca for the event annually. He helped the City of Chicago in crowd management, emergency evacuation and planning for the “Taste of Chicago” event. He also worked as a consultant to the Jordanian Government on integrating high-rise development in the Amman Master Plan. According to a study conducted by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, Dr Al-Kodmany ranked seventh in the number of publications by all US planning faculty members 1998–2003. He received the Outstanding Research and Outstanding Teaching Awards from the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign upon completing his PhD there. He received his early training in architecture from his late father Professor Abdul Muhsen Al-Kodmany, a former Le Corbusier trainee.