This November, Nebraska Water Center staff and DWFI Faculty Fellows contributed to two workshops in India organized by former Water Advanced Research Initiative (WARI) fellows.
The first workshop was a one-day international workshop on water and air quality research for societal health organized by 2017 WARI fellow, Paromita Chakraborty, and held at SRM Institute of Sciences and Technology in Chennai on November 13. Daniel Snow, director of the Water Sciences Lab, provided a plenary presentation on advanced methods for monitoring agroecosystem water quality. Other speakers from surrounding universities in India and Nepal presented research and monitoring technologies for water and air pollution, both of which have become severe throughout the country.
A second six-day workshop was co-organized by 2016 WARI fellow Rajeev Pratap Singh of Banaras Hindu University, DWFI Faculty Fellow Shannon Bartelt-Hunt, and former DWFI Fellow Alan Kolok, currently director of the Idaho Water Resources Institute. The workshop was funded by the India-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF) with a theme of The Water-Food-Energy-Climate Nexus: A perspective towards a sustainable future. Held November 16-21 at Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in Varanasi, the goal was to address societal challenges in providing water, food and energy security in the future and how the nexus between water-food-energy-climate can be used to address sustainability challenges. Presenters from the U.S. included Jesse Bell, professor of health and environment at the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health; Chittaranjan Ray, director of the Nebraska Water Center; Yusong Li, DWFI Faculty Fellow and associate professor of the UNL Civil Engineering Department.
The WFEC-2018 workshop included scientists and scholars from across India and covered topics ranging from water scarcity in India to agricultural and urban water pollution and climate change. Nearly 80 attendees and presenters contributed to a successful workshop at BHU paving the way for building new collaborative efforts between India and U.S. scientists and engineers in the areas of water, food and energy sustainability under increasing stress from climate change.
Both workshops are outcomes of the Water Advanced Research and Innovation (WARI) Fellowship Program developed to foster long-term Indo-American science and technology partnerships and co-sponsored by DWFI and the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum. The WARI program began in 2016 and was recently approved for continuation through 2022.