Hina Zia
Professor and Head at the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture and Ekistics at Jamia Millia Islamia, a Central University in New Delhi, India

Dr. Hina Zia is currently Professor and Head at the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture and Ekistics at Jamia Millia Islamia, a Central University in New Delhi, India. Her specific area of interest is facilitating the undergraduate (Architecture students ) and post-graduate students (particularly in the field of Urban Regeneration and Ekistics) explore the interface of ecology, economics and development and build their capacities to look for alternative approaches while working on solutions through their studio exercises on resilience building. Prior to joining the University she worked as an Associate Director with GBCI (the only certification and credentialing body within the green business and sustainability industry to exclusively administer project certifications and professional credentials of LEED, EDGE, GRESB, Parksmart, PEER, SITES, TRUE and WELL). She also worked as Associate Director with the Sustainable Habitat Division at TERI and Adjunct Faculty at TERI University.



Qualified as an architect and urban and rural planner, she has built her career in a variety of roles. Her specific interests lie in trying to find implementable solutions and business models on issues pertaining to growing urbanization. She has worked on several projects related to climate resilience, social/affordable housing, low impact development, water and waste management issues apart from several green building projects. Some of her recent work pertains to navigating the realms of low-carbon growth at sub-national and national level (for construction sector). She also led the team at TERI to start the Mahindra TERI Centre for Excellence for Sustainable Habitats.


In her over 18 years of experience, she has had the opportunity to work at both macro and micro scales, from policy making to actual implementation and monitoring of the strategies/impacts to achieve contextual resource efficiency. She has the experience of working on both national and international projects, often requiring cross-disciplinary understanding. She also enjoys writing papers for referred journals and books and has a flair for quantitative analysis to see the impacts of policy changes in mid-long term at different scales. She has developed curriculum/courses and interaction/training for practitioners and students. She has worked on several cross-cutting areas and programs which looked at GHG inventory preparation, mitigation action plans, water and waste management, green infrastructure, energy supply and demand side management, financial promotional programs to promote energy efficient homes, guidelines for human settlements, integration of resource efficiency in national building codes, policy interventions, institutional implementation structures and actual implementation of projects attempting green building rating compliance. 

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