Mark Anthony Mesina Gamboa is a registered and licensed environmental planner and lawyer with more than 20 years of professional experience in integrating spatial planning, law, institutions, climate resilience, and international research perspectives. He is an assistant professor and college secretary at the University of the Philippines School of Urban and Regional Planning, where he teaches land use planning, planning law, planning theory and practice, planning workshop, planning process, project planning and development, and research methods. He has advised and supervised graduate students undertaking planning research and preparing land use and development plans for local government units.

Mark has led multidisciplinary teams and advised national and local governments, civil society organizations, and international development partners on comprehensive and spatial planning, risk-informed development, smart cities and neighborhoods, strategic foresight, and institutional capacity development. He has served as project leader, land use planning specialist, legal specialist, and institutional development adviser for numerous local, metropolitan, regional, and special-area plans. His experience includes the preparation and updating of Comprehensive Land and Water Use Plans, Comprehensive Development Plans, Local Climate Change Action Plans, zoning ordinances, regional physical framework plans, and master development plans. At the metropolitan and regional scales, he serves as Institutional and Legal Specialist for the Metropolitan Manila Regional Physical Framework Plan and previously contributed to the comprehensive urban infrastructure master plans of Metro Iloilo and Metro Bacolod. He continues to advise the Manila City Planning and Development Office on strategic consolidation, investment programming, institutional capacity development, and organizational rightsizing toward an integrated city planning system. He regularly serves as a resource person on land use planning and the role of sanggunian in development planning for capacity-building programs attended by local chief executives, members of local legislative councils, and other local public officials.

His experience also covers specialized land use and development contexts. He served as Senior Technical Adviser for a state university's Land Use Development and Infrastructure Plan and as an institutional specialist for master development plans involving the Freeport Area of Bataan, Libingan ng mga Bayani, Fort San Felipe, and a naval reservation in Ternate, Cavite. He was Legal Sector Lead for the development of a national Fisherfolk Settlements Policy Framework and has contributed to planning and policy work involving reclamation, marine and coastal governance, green building regulation, drainage and urban resilience, open spaces, public infrastructure, and climate-sensitive urban mobility.

Mark brings significant international and cross-country research experience to his work in land use planning and urban resilience. He currently serves as a project collaborator for two Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN) projects: (1) Bridging academic researchers and vulnerable island communities in the Philippines: Enhancing capacities for climate and disaster risk management of low-income municipalities in Batanes, Philippines (CBA2024-01SY-Santiago) and (2) Unraveling urban resilience using City Preparedness Index: Scientific evaluation method for developing policy and action networks (CRRP2023-10MY-Uchiyama). He previously served as an in-country co-investigator for the Centre for Sustainable, Healthy, and Learning Cities and Neighbourhoods Philippines, which is part of an international consortium of nine research partners aiming to strengthen capacity to address urban, health, and education challenges in neighbourhoods throughout Africa and Asia's fast-growing cities. He likewise worked as a co-investigator on the UNESCO-IIEP and University of Glasgow-led Local Challenges, Global Imperatives: Cities at the Forefront of Achieving Education 2030 (Cities and Education 2030) research grant. 

Mark holds Bachelor of Arts (Public Administration), Diploma and Master of Arts degrees in Urban and Regional Planning, and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of the Philippines Diliman. He is a PhD candidate in Urban and Regional Planning, with a dissertation examining the relationship between planning law and the spatial planning system and its implications for local development and spatial rights. His other research interests explore land use institutions, environmental planning jurisprudence, property regimes, urban morphology, spatial justice, climate-sensitive planning, and the role of law and judicial decisions in shaping urban land-use patterns.