Opening Ceremony
Sustainable Places 2025 kicked off with an excellent lineup of keynote speakers who announced initiatives and shared perspectives from the leading edge of both scientific and market activities. You could meet them in the table below, and we looked forward to this opening session.
Thomas Messervey, CEO R2M Solution
Tom led the organizing committee of Sustainable Places and opened Sustainable Places 2025, presenting the event logistics, key highlights, and an overview of the days ahead, while moderating the opening ceremony.
Born in Maine, USA, Tom’s career spans service in the US military as an engineering officer, teaching at the United States Military Academy at West Point, transitioning to Italy, working with D’Appolonia, the European Commission and co-founding R2M Solution (Research to Market – embodying the company vision).
Anna Scavuzzo, Deputy Mayor of Milan
Born and educated in Milan, Anna has been serving as the Deputy Mayor since 2016 with oversight of Education, Urban School Infrastructure, University & Research and Food Policy. She is widely recognized for her commitment to civic participation, sustainability and inclusivity leading initiatives to combat food waste and foster community involvement. She also represents Milan in several EU projects, contributing to international exchanges on smart, sustainable, and inclusive cities.
Anna provided the opening keynote of Sustainable Places 2025 welcoming delegates and sharing several of Milan’s signature initiatives and why we can be optimistic about the future.
Jacopo Palermo, Associate Partner – TEHA Ambrosetti Group
A civil enegineer with an executive MBA, Jacopo is a seasoned real estate executive with over two decades of experience in construction, development, and strategic leadership. Until the end of 2023, first as GM and then as CEO of Costim Group, a prominent Italian real estate developer, he focused on asset and development management, as well as on turnaround and growth in the construction industry, achieving significant results, with innovative projects like the Chorus Life and a pipeline of major urban regeneration mixed-use real estate projects based on a concept of digital servitization of assets.
In May 2024, Jacopo joined TEHA Group, of which he is Associate Partner managing the Real Estate & Construction area, where he drives initiatives in urban regeneration, investments, and sustainability connecting public administrations with investors and developers.
Jacopo provided his perspective on the challenges of smart cities and smart buildings across Europe, with a focus on Italy and how to foster public private partnership and unleash market potential.
Ralph Maloumby Baka, PhD, Research and Innovation Attaché –Quebec Government Office in Italy
Ralph is a strategist, social scientist, and Research and Innovation Attaché at the Quebec Government Office in Italy. He is based in Milan, where he fosters partnerships between Quebec and Italian ecosystems in research, innovation, and urban development. Ralph has supported European Commission projects on African diaspora engagement and promotes cross-border collaborations in sectors like technical textiles, energy transition, and public policy innovation. He has worked for the OECD, the World bank, and the UN.
Ralph provided an overview of Quebec’s participation in Horizon Europe, the Quebec Delegation and how to open collaboration opportunities.
Elke Moors, Managing Director – Building Digital Twin Association (BDTA)
Formerly the head of economic and commercial delegation of Flanders in Barcelona promoting cross-border collaborations, Elke is currently the Manager Director of the Building Digital Twin Association (BDTA). The BDTA is a European non-profit organization based in Antwerp, Belgium, dedicated to promoting digitalization, standardization, and innovation in the construction industry through digital twin technologies.
Elke detailed the mission of the BDTA and the recently signed Kaunas Declaration on Digital Building Permits.
Germain Adell, Managing Director – METABUILDING ASBL
An architect and urban planner, Germain is a champion of innovation in the construction industry. After serving as Deputy Director and head of EU R&D at Nobatek, France’s institute for the energy and environmental transition in the building sector, he founded the Metabuilding Association in Brussels. As Managing Director, he now leads the non-profit ecosystem, that includes an Open Innovation Test Bed, dedicated to advancing innovation, product development, and sustainability across the European built environment industry.
At SP25, Germain provided a short overview of the Metabuilding Ecosystem, the Built4People Innovation Clusters Network and announced a new Affiliated Membership category opening and inviting participation to construction sector SMEs and associations.
Andrew Fitzpatrick, Europe Business Manager – BrainBox AI
Andrew Fitzpatrick is the Director of Business Development, Europe, at BrainBox AI, a Montreal-headquartered company leveraging artificial intelligence to optimize HVAC systems in commercial buildings. Andrew works with companies across Europe and the UK to help transform their buildings with autonomous and generative AI.
With installations in over 15,000 commercial buildings across 21 countries worldwide, Andrew discussed how AI is impacting the building sector, the trace of BrainBox AI from idea to high tech startup to its positioning today, and thoughts on the next generation of AI in buildings in a 5-10 year timeframe.
Thomas Miorin, CEO – Edera
Thomas Miorin is the co-founder and CEO of EDERA, an Italian social enterprise dedicated to large-scale decarbonization and deep regeneration of the built environment through innovative, off-site construction solutions for net-zero, full-electric, and seismic-resilient buildings. With over a decade of expertise in sustainable construction, he founded and chaired REbuild, Italy’s premier event on real estate innovation, and promoted national adoption of certifications like LEED, BREEAM, and GRESB, as well as the Energiesprong initiative for industrialized retrofits. A former lecturer at the University of Padua and the Higher Institute of Business Administration in Damascus, Miorin drives cross-sector collaborations to accelerate Italy’s transition to a low-carbon built environment.
At Sustainable Places, Thomas provided an overview of Edera’s activities, best practices in working with municipalities, aligning stakeholder value chains and how to get deep retrofits done.
Video recording
Closing ceremony
CEO of R2M Solution, Thomas Messervey, closed Sustainable Places 2025 by celebrating record participation — 444 registrants, over 160 EU projects, 28 clustering workshops, 8 paper sessions, and 6 thematic tracks — and thanking all partners and sponsors for making the event a success. During his remarks, Messervey announced that Sustainable Places 2026 will take place in Luxembourg, co-organised with Sylvain Kubicki from the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST). The announcement continues the strong collaboration between R2M and LIST, reflecting SP’s tradition of rotating across European innovation hubs to foster research dissemination, policy dialogue, and market uptake in sustainability.