Dr. Mona El Khafif is project coordinator of CCA URBANlab. She has worked on several Viennese design projects, such as the BUSarchitecure pilot Homeworkers project, which received the Otto Wagner Urban Development Prize in 1998, and the Ortner & Ortner Museumsquartier Vienna, one of the 10 largest cultural urban districts in the world. She is a founding member of IG architecture, a platform for the development of contemporary architecture in Vienna. She has extensive experience in the organization and direction of international urban workshops and in developing collaborative cooperation programs with universities in other countries, including Germany, Turkey, Iran, and the United States.

Before coming to CCA, El Khafif taught at the Institute of Urban Design/TU Vienna, then joined the URBANbuild program at Tulane University in New Orleans in 2006 to support studios at the urban and architectural scales in the aftermath or Hurricane Katrina. She is the coauthor of URBANbuild: Local/Global. Her current research operates at multiple scales, examining the interdisciplinary aspects of European urban renewal strategies.

The 2010–11 Architecture Lecture Series is funded by Grants for the Arts / San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund; HDR Architecture; Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum, Inc.; Pfau Long Architecture; ROMA Design Group; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP; SmithGroup; WRNS Studio; Jensen Architects; Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects; BraytonHughes Design Studios; Cass Calder Smith; Fennie + Mehl Architects; GCI, Inc.; Levy Design Partners; SRG Partnership; Ratcliff; Ryan Associates; BIOS Design Collective; and Andrea Cochran.