Ray Cole is a Professor and past-director in the School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture (SALA) at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada.

He has been teaching environmental issues in building design for the past 40 years.

He is a Senior Research Fellow and past-director of UBC’s Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) which is directed at accelerating the adoption of sustainable building technologies and sustainable urban development practices in society.

His current research interests relate to regenerative development & design, building environmental performance assessment, and human and automated intelligence.

He was co-founder of the Green Building Challenge in 1998 – an international collaborative effort to benchmark progress in green building performance and environmental assessment that has evolved into the World Sustainable Building Conference series.

Ray Cole received his undergraduate degree in civil engineering from City University, London, and a PhD in architectural science from the University of Wales, Cardiff, United Kingdom. Although his education is in engineering and science, he has spent the majority of his career in the field of architecture and is an Honorary Member of the Architectural Institute of BC and a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.

He has received numerous academic and professional awards and distinctions for his research, teaching and leadership activities in the field of green building. He holds the designation of North American Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Distinguished Professor and UBC Distinguished University Scholar. He received the Architectural Institute of British Columbia Barbara Dalrymple Memorial Award for Community Service and the US Green Building Council’s Green Public Service Leadership Award (2003), and he was recognized as a Fellow of the Cascadia Chapter of the US/Canada Green Building Councils and the recipient of the Sustainable Buildings Canada’s Life-time Achievement Award (2008). He received the Canada Green Building Council’s 2009 Lifetime Leadership Award and was a recipient of the 2013 World Green Building Council Chairman’s Award.

He was a member of the Awards jury for North America in 2008 and 2011, and Head of the Jury in 2017. He co-wrote the paper “Motivating stakeholders to deliver change” that served as a basis for the workshop Stimulate stakeholders – With incentives to implementation at the 3rd International Holcim Forum 2010 in Mexico City.