Rachelle Alterman is Professor (emerita) of urban planning and law at Technion--Israel Institute of Technology and Senior Researcher at the Neaman Institute for National Policy Research. She heads the Laboratory on Comparative Planning Law and Property Rights. Alterman is the founding president of the International Academic Association on Planning, Law and Property Rights. Her research interests include comparative planning law and land use regulation, comparative land policy and property rights, housing policy, and implementation of public policy. She is highly published and cited. For her pioneering contribution to the field, she was awarded Honorary Member status by the Association of European Schools of Planning (among only 6 awarded this distinction, and the only non-European), and has been selected as one of 16 global "leaders in planning thought" whose academic autobiographies have recently been published in the book "Encounters in Planning Thought" (Routledge, 2017).
Cygal Pellach holds a Bachelor of Planning from UNSW, Sydney, Australia and MSc in Urban and Regional Planning from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. She is currently undertaking doctoral studies, also at the Technion, under Rachelle Alterman’s supervision. Prior to embarking on an academic path, Cygal garnered five years’ experience in urban planning practice in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. She has since worked on several academic research projects, including the EU Mare Nostrum project.