The University of Hong Kong

Associate Professor

Dr. Chao Ren is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong. She specializes in applied climatology and climate responsive design, especially urban heat island effect and heat-health impact assessment. She has published widely in highly ranked journals and peer-reviewed conferences, focusing primarily on examining the relationship between urban climate and urban morphological characteristics, developing an urban climatic mapping system, and analysing urbanization-induced human thermal comfort and public health risk impacts for high-density/compact cities.  Chao’s multi-dimensional, cross-disciplinary research has transferred scientific data into new knowledge to address social needs, enhance policy-making and support evidence-based designs in China, Taiwan, Singapore, The Netherlands and France since 2006. Chao is a Co-Chief Editor for Urban Climate and a member of the Urban Climate Expert Team and the Study Group on Greenhouse Gas Monitoring of the World Meteorology Organization. She also serves as the Strengthen Emergency Preparedness and Response Strategic Committee member of the Hong Kong Red Cross. She has also been elected as a Board Member of the International Association for Urban Climate (2017-2021). She has been involved in several international collaborative research reports, including the IPCC AR6 (Contributing Author of Chapter 6 Cities, Settlements and Key Infrastructure), Climate Change and Cities ARC3.3 (Lead Author of Chapter 2), the China report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change (Lead Author of WGII) and the 7th Global Environment Outlook (GEO-7) (Lead Author of Chapter 2) of UN Environment Programme.