Mina Marefat, an architectural historian, urban designer, and registered architect, holds a PhD from MIT and masters degrees in architecture and urban design from both Harvard University and Tehran University. She currently holds an NEH fellowship and directs the Cities Project; she was formerly the Rockefeller Scholar of the John W. Kluge Center for Scholarly Studies at the Library of Congress. Dr. Marefat teaches at Johns Hopkins University and Catholic University of America's School of Architecture where she initiated a studio project on the reconstruction of Bam after its devastating earthquake. She has taught art, architecture, and urbanism at MIT, Wesleyan University, and Technical University in Vienna, Austria, and has lectured and published widely. Her practice has focused on the revitalization and rehabilitation of cities and streetscapes, including Washington, Newark, Tehran, and Isfahan, in each case integrating cultural heritage with redevelopment. Prior to establishing her own firm she served as senior architectural historian at the Smithsonian Institution, was a research associate at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art and later served as director of architectural education at the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in Geneva, Switzerland.