Leadership — GPEIG

GPEIG Co-Chairs 2026

Colleen Chiu-Shee (2026-2028)

Colleen Chiu-Shee is an Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a scholar, practitioner, and educator in city design and development. Trained and professionally active across North America and Asia, she brings more than a decade of design practice and a lived understanding of where planning and everyday cultures diverge and converge. That experience grounds a cosmopolitan ethos that guides how she learns, teaches, and treats others, one that honors the particularities of every place and the diversity within each person. She especially enjoys collaborating with researchers who bring grounded perspectives from different parts of the world.

Her research examines the emerging ideas, policies, and practices shaping green and just cities, and how these visions travel globally and take root locally. It spans three areas: (1) future-city experiments in China, placed in dialogue with developments across the Global East, North, and South; (2) utopian thinking as a force in planning practice; and (3) smart technology as future-making infrastructure, supported in part by the National Science Foundation.

Dr. Chiu-Shee has served as an International Expert supporting China’s international collaborations on environment and development, and as a Member of the National Committee on United States–China Relations.

As GPEIG Co-Chair, she seeks to renew GPEIG’s efforts to understand international students’ experiences, explore what global planning education means in changing times, and strengthen exchange among researchers and practitioners who work across cultures and borders.

Contact: ccs32@illinois.edu

Shruti Syal (2025-2027)

Shruti Syal is a social-ecological systems researcher with over 15 years of multidisciplinary research experience in India, Oman, Canada, and the United States. She is an Assistant Professor in Urban and Regional Studies and Planning at VCU's School of Government and Public Affairs, and connected with global research groups like South Asian Urban Climates, the International Association for the Study of the Commons, and the International Water Association.

Her current research centers on large-scale network mapping and analysis in two domains: (1) water, sanitation, hygiene (WaSH) and nature‑based solutions in Delhi’s stormwater drain‑adjacent informal settlements, and (2) green infrastructure and social-ecological capital for urban resilience in Richmond, Virginia. These projects synthesize fragmented institutional, spatial, and organizational datasets into interactive system maps that make complex governance challenges legible to scholars, practitioners, and communities.

Shruti’s scholarship and teaching draw on planning, geography, and environmental science to treat cities as integrated human–environment systems, with a particular focus on climate justice and infrastructure inequality.

As GPEIG Co‑Chair, she is leading Project BRidGE, an emerging international network map designed to strengthen global collaboration and mentorship among planning educators and early‑career scholars.

Contact: syals@vcu.edu

Past GPEIG Co-Chairs