Water Institute member and Director of Waterloo's Collaborative Water Program, Nandita Basu, has been selected as a 2021 Earth Leadership Fellow.
The Earth Leadership Program provides outstanding academic researchers with the skills, approaches, and theoretical frameworks for catalyzing change to address the world’s most pressing sustainability challenges, emphasizing new forms of individual and collective leadership. The program enables scientists to work collaboratively with diverse stakeholders and become agents of change within and beyond their universities.
Nandita Basu, a professor in Waterloo's Departments of Earth and Environmental Science and Civil and Environmental Engineering, studies the role that humans play in modifying water availability and quality through changing land use and climate, providing innovative solutions to water sustainability challenges. Professor Basu is specifically interested in the study of watershed biogeochemistry under climate and land-use change, and observing its linkages with system sustainability and resilience. Other research interests of Professor Basu’s include understanding fate and transport of nutrients and emerging contaminants in human-dominated landscapes, along with catchment travel-time distributions and their role in predicting water quality across scales. She is also interested in modelling hydrology and water quality in depressional landscapes, and studying the sustainability of water resources.
"I am really honoured to be selected as an Earth Leadership Fellow," said Basu. "My gratitude to the University of Waterloo's Faculties of Science and Engineering, and the Water Institute for providing the support and space to grow. I am also grateful to the Global Water Futures program for enabling research that has societal relevance."
This year’s North America cohort is composed of 21 passionate academics working within a wide array of disciplines related to sustainability, from marine biology to atmospheric chemistry, governance, and economics. The fellows, who come from 11 U.S. states, Canada, and Mexico, are committed to pursuing transdisciplinary work that brings together scientific disciplines, government representatives, private sector voices, and civil society to build a more sustainable future for all.
The full list of fellows for the 2021 North American Cohort of the Earth Leadership Program can be found here.