Professor Michael Batty CBE FRS FBA will be awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science from City University of Macau, China, in recognition of his pioneering contributions to urban science research and education.
Prof Batty is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the British Academy and he is recognised as a Foreign Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has been instrumental in transforming urban planning through innovative dynamic spatial models and digital twin technologies. His complexity theory and fractal models have provided crucial theoretical foundations for urban science and new approaches to visualisation for smart cities worldwide.
His theory of fractal cities was the first to systematically reveal the self-similarity of urban spaces, with findings published in prestigious journals including Nature and Science. These publications are considered milestones in the study of complex urban systems.
Prof Batty was the founding director of The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at UCL from 1995 to 2010. Under his leadership, CASA developed platforms integrating geographic information systems with artificial intelligence, enabling real-time dynamic modelling of large-scale urban data.
The award will be conferred in a ceremony taking place on Saturday 24 May 2025. During Prof Batty’s visit, he will deliver a public lecture titled ‘Building Digital Twins for Systems of Cities’ on Monday 26 May 2025 from 10:30–12:00 at the Ho Yin Convention Centre in the Taipa campus. The lecture will be delivered in English with simultaneous interpretation into Mandarin.