Members

Anjal Prakash is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean at the TERI School of Advanced Studies (SAS), Hyderabad. Before joining TERI SAS, Prakash worked as the Programme Coordinator of Himalayan Adaptation, Water and Resilience (HI-AWARE) Research on Glacier and Snowpack Dependent River Basins at the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) based in Kathmandu, Nepal. HI-AWARE focused on adaptation issues in three river basins of South Asia: the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra. Prakash has been nominated as the Coordinating Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC). He has also been nominated as a Lead Author in the chapter on Cities, Settlements and Key Infrastructure in the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report. He was recently nominated as a member of the IPCC’s Gender Task Group to develop a framework of goals and actions to improve gender balance and address gender-related issues within the IPCC. Prakash previously led the South Asia Consortium for Interdisciplinary Water Resources Studies (SaciWATERs) – a South Asian think tank that works in six South Asian countries – as Executive Director. He is the author of The Dark Zone: Groundwater Irrigation, Politics and Social Power in North Gujarat (2005) and has co-edited numerous other books. Prakash holds an advanced degree from the Tata Institute and Social Sciences, India, and a PhD in Social/Environmental Sciences from Wageningen University, the Netherlands.

Atul Aditya Pandey is a Professor and Head of the Department of Geology at Patna Science College, Patna University. Along with a Master’s degree in Geology from Patna University, he has completed his MPhil from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, for which he extensively studied the glaciated terrain of the Himalaya in Uttarakhand. His doctorate work encompassed sedimentological study of a part of the Vindhyan basin, a Proterozoic basin in central India. He has handled research projects on the Koshi and Ganga basins, focusing on fluvial geomorphology and flood management. Besides being involved in scientific projects, he actively encourages youth involvement in disaster management activities, environment protection, and sustainable development as a Coordinator (Patna University) of the National Service Scheme, a public service programme sponsored by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, Government of India.

Binaya Kumar Mishra is a Professor at the School of Engineering, Pokhara University, Nepal, where he teaches and conducts research on civil, hydropower, and public health and disaster engineering. His interests include water resources management, climate and ecosystem change adaptation, hydrologic and environmental modelling, and applications of GIS and remote sensing. Before joining Pokhara University, he briefly worked as an Associate Professor at the Central Campus of Engineering, Mid-Western University, Nepal. Mishra has also served as a researcher and faculty member at different academic institutions in Japan and has experience working as an Irrigation Engineer at the Ministry of Irrigation; Senior Lecturer at Kathmandu Engineering College, Tribhuvan University; and Consultant Engineer at Everest Engineering Consultancy.

Fan Zhang is a Professor at the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Associate Editor of the Journal of Hydrological Engineering. She acquired her PhD degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Central Florida and served as a Research Staff Scientist in the Environmental Sciences Division of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, USA. Zhang’s research focuses on computational fluid dynamics, surface and ground water hydrology, geochemical equilibrium, and kinetics. She has published over 60 journal papers and contributed to the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment as one of the Chapter Coordinating Lead Authors. Her details can be accessed at: http://sourcedb.itpcas.cas.cn/en/expert/yjy/200912/t20091223_2717714.html

Guanxing Wang is currently a PhD candidate at the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Wang obtained her postgraduate degree in Environmental Engineering at Beijing Jiaotong University, China. Wang’s PhD research focuses on the changes, influencing factors, and load simulation of river-suspended sediment on the Tibetan Plateau. She has published over 10 journal papers and participated in the joint research project “The Water Quality Dynamics and the Environmental Implications in the Koshi River Basin”. Her details can be accessed at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Guanxing_Wang

Title: Ph.D. in Earth Sciences
Name of the Institution: INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY KANPUR, KANPUR-208016. UTTAR PRADESH, INDIA
List of publications:
a) Kanchan Mishra, Rajiv Sinha, Vikrant Jain, Santosh Nepal, Kabir Uddin. Towards the assessment of sediment connectivity in a large Himalayan river basin. Science of The Total Environment 661 (2019), 251-265.
b) Kanchan Mishra, Rajiv Sinha. Flood risk assessment in the Kosi alluvial plains (megafan) using multi-criteria decision analysis: a hydro-geomorphic approach. Geomorphology 350, (2019), 106861.
c) Rajiv Sinha, Alok Gupta, Kanchan Mishra, Shivam Tripathi, Santosh Nepal, Shahriar Wahid, Somil Swarnkar. Basin scale hydrology and sediment dynamics of the Kosi River in the Himalayan foreland. Journal of Hydrology 570 (2019), 156-166.

Email: advrajuthapa@gmail.com Raju Thapa is the General Secretary of Disaster Preparedness Network Nepal. He is also a founder and board member of the Tribhuvan University-affiliated Institute of Crisis Management Studies in Nepal. He has experience working with various government and non-government organizations and in academia. He has also served as a Research Fellow at the Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies, Tribhuvan University. Thapa was awarded the Australia Awards Fellowship on inclusive disaster management and is currently pursuing a PhD in disaster management.

Sanjay Pandey is the Head of the Multidisciplinary Team at Yuganter. He overseas efforts to build the resilience of communities by engaging in policy advocacy and piloting new ideas, with a focus on Bihar, India. Pandey has more than three decades of programme management experience, with his interests encompassing strengthening the capacity of the community for health, education, and natural hazard-related challenges; and, policy advocacy for system strengthening. He is actively involved in a transborder community-based flood early warning system programme along with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Bihar State Disaster Management Authority (BSDMA), Disaster Management Department (DMD), and district administrative bodies. Pandey is the Honorary Convener of the Bihar Inter Agency Group (BIAG), a platform for collaboration and coordination of non-government agencies in the field of disaster management in the state. He has worked with various government and international organizations, including Action Aid, Project Concern International, and UNICEF. He completed his MPhil in Political Science from Delhi University.

Sujana Dhar obtained her doctorate in Civil Engineering (Water Resources Engineering) from Jadavpur University and Master’s degree in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Engineering, Science, and Technology (IIEST), Shibpur. She has around 15 years of professional experience in climate resilient infrastructure planning, hydrological modelling, changed climate modelling, early warning systems, and water allocation projects for the World Bank, DFID, ADB, and JICA. Dhar has over 40 publications under her belt. She is currently working on a climate-resilient land use and infrastructural plan for Kolkata City, West Bengal, India, as part of an ADB project. She also supports business development activities and conducts site visits, client interactions, and presentations at Taru Leading Edge in her capacity as Practice Manager, Risk and Resilience. Email: sdhar@taru.co.in

Suman Shrestha is a Lecturer and PhD candidate at the Department of Civil Engineering, Kathmandu University, where his research is focused on landslides and soil erosion of watersheds. He completed his Master’s degree in Water Resources Engineering, for which he worked on an optimization model for the allocation of drinking water supply in Dharan Municipality. He teaches water and hydropower-related subjects, fluid mechanics, engineering hydrology and sedimentology, and hydraulics and river engineering. Before joining Kathmandu University, he served as a Design Engineer at Hydro Solutions, Kathmandu. He recently contributed to a WWF project focused on water sources and forest mapping in the Rosi and Melamchi watersheds.

Email: tshoji@fri.niche.tohoku.ac.jp Tetsuo Shoji served as a Professor at Tohoku University, Japan, from 1986 to 2018, where he also assumed the role of Executive Vice President for Research from 2006. He was honoured as a Professor Emeritus of the university in 2015. He was appointed by the Prime Minister as a member of the Science Council of Japan and elected as a member of the Japan Engineering Academy. His current research interests span trans-science, international cooperation for sharing disaster event databases, knowledge bases and commendable practices, and natural hazard-triggered technology accidents. With over 560 published journal papers under his belt, he continues his research work as a Senior Research Fellow at the New Industry Creation Hatchery Center at the university, and as a High-Level Foreign Professor at the Institute for Disaster Management and Reconstruction, Sichuan University, China. He completed his PhD from Tohoku University and worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the UK and as a Visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.

Yili Zhang is a Professor, Principal Investigator, and Head of the Department of Land Change Science and Biogeography at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He has a strong background in land use and land cover change (LULCC) and vegetation change in the Tibetan Plateau and Himalayan region, with over 220 scientific publications. Zhang has more than 20 years of experience managing projects and collaborating in joint projects. Recently, his research has focused on LULCC over various scales and terrestrial ecosystem dynamics; observation and modelling of LULCC; LULCC and its environmental effects; applications of remote sensing and GIS to integrated environment assessment; and agriculture and ecosystem management. Zhang also has experience delivering scientific outputs on land management in the Tibetan Plateau for the local and central governments of China.

Zhao Wei is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research is focused on quantitative remote sensing and its applications, with a special interest in the mountainous regions of the Hindu Kush Himalaya. He has published over 60 peer-reviewed journal articles and serves as a reviewer of more than 20 international peer-reviewed journals. He is serving as the Secretary of both the Professional Committee for Digital Mountain, Chinese National Committee of International Society for Digital Earth, and the Sino-Nepal Joint Research Center for Geography.