Prof. Dr. Serap Kayasü is a faculty member in the Department of City and Regional Planning at Middle East Technical University (METU). She completed her undergraduate studies in the Department of City and Regional Planning at METU, earned her Master’s degree at the University of Waterloo in Canada, and obtained her Ph.D. in the same department at METU. Currently, she continues her academic endeavors in this department and served as a visiting professor at the University of Waterloo during the 2017-2018 academic year. Between 2003 and 2009, she held the position of Vice Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at METU and was a founding member of the Architecture Research Design Planning and Application Center (MATPUM) and the METU Faculty of Architecture Alumni Association (OMIM). Prof. Dr. Kayasü also served as the Head of the Department from 2020 to 2023 and is presently the coordinator of the Master's program in City Planning. Prof. Dr. Kayasü has played a pivotal role in organizing various national and international conferences. Notably, she co-hosted the Local Development and Governance Symposium in 2006 in collaboration with TEPAV and the METU Faculty of Architecture. In 2012, she organized the Doctoral Workshop as part of the annual congress of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP). Her expertise was also sought by the World Bank in 2008, where she provided consultancy on Governance Approaches and Local Development in Turkey. In 2023, she organized the AGORA Planning Students Meeting on Resilient Cities under the auspices of the METU Department of City and Regional Planning, a groundbreaking event that involved all planning schools in Turkey. Her research interests encompass urban geography paradigms, institutionalization in planning, resilient cities, women and the city, urban agriculture, and local economic development policies. Prof. Dr. Kayasü has made significant contributions to these fields through her extensive research, publishing numerous books, book chapters, and articles in both English and Turkish. Her notable work, "Local Economic Development and Enhancing Competitiveness: Development Agencies," based on research conducted for the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce in 2003, was published just before the establishment of Development Agencies in Turkey. Internationally, she contributed to the "Policies and Practices in Urban Development: Gentrification 2.0" project from 2013 to 2017 within the Urban Europe Joint Project Initiative, one of the first TÜBİTAK ARBIS-supported projects in Turkey. Nationally, her research includes the "Ankara Urban Agriculture Strategy" for the Ankara Development Agency between 2019 and 2020, which is the first urban agriculture strategy study in Turkey.