Iván Tosics is one of the principals of Metropolitan Research Institute (MRI), Budapest. He is a mathematician and a sociologist (PhD) with long experience in urban sociology, strategic development, housing policy and EU regional policy issues. Since 2011 he is one of Programme Experts of the URBACT programme. He teaches at the University of Pécs, Department of Political Studies, Doctoral School. He is vice chair of the European Network of Housing Research (ENHR), executive committee member of the European Urban Research Association (EURA) and was member of the HS-NET Advisory Board to UN-HABITAT (until 2013). He is the Policy Editor of the journal ‘Urban Research and Practice’, member of the Editorial Advisory Board for the ‘Journal of Housing and the Built Environment’ and for ‘Housing Studies’. He is involved, on the request of DG Regio, in the development of the EU Urban Agenda, organizing and managing the Urban Development Network (UDN) meetings on integrated urban development, especially regarding the link between the Integrated Territorial Investments (ITI) and the area-based urban renewal policies. He was member of the Advisory Board of the European Cities Report (launched at the Habitat III Conference) for the European Commission and UN-Habitat. He contributed to the UN-HABITAT project on the State of the European Cities in Transition Report. He was member of the Selection Committee of the 2014 Bloomberg Mayors Challenge for European cities. He was part of the consortium performing for DG Regio the study on the use of housing interventions from European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) resources. He participated in the work lead by the European Association for Information on Local Development: AEIDL ‘Good practice in urban development: projects and approaches supported by the European Regional Development Fund during the 2007-2013 programming period’, prepared for DG Regio. He was invited as expert to the European Parliament public hearing on ‘The place of Europe’s towns and cities in Cohesion policy’. He was working for DG Regio in the Cities of Tomorrow programme, preparing an issue paper on ‘Governance challenges and models for the cities of tomorrow’. He was one of the organizers of the high-level conference on Demographic changes during the Hungarian EU Presidency. He was Lead Expert of two URBACT networks. He represented for many years the Municipality of Budapest in EUROCITIES, as chair of the Economic Development Forum in 2007-2008 and as member of the Executive Committee in 2009-2010. He was the leader of a consortium working on the medium and long term Urban Development Strategy of Budapest (1997-2003).