Colin Ellard is a professor of cognitive neuroscience and the director of the Urban Realities Laboratory at the University of Waterloo, studying wayfinding, cognition, and emotion in built environments. He has published extensively on visual perception, environmental psychology, cognitive mapping, virtual reality, and neuroscience, presenting his work at international conferences in cognitive science, architecture, and planning. He collaborates with architects, designers, planners, and artists globally. His books, "Places of the Heart" (2015) and "You Are Here" (2009), have received strong praise from major media outlets like the New York Times and Scientific American.