Team

Professor Elfatih Eltahir

Lead Principal Investigator

Dr. Elfatih Eltahir is H. M. King Bhumibol Professor of Hydrology and Climate, and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Dr. Eltahir is a recipient of the US Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 1997; and the Kuwait Prize in Applied Science in 2000 for his work on climate change. He has been elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in 2008. He received the Hydrologic Sciences Award of the American Geophysical Union in 2017. He is elected member of National Academy of Engineering (2023), fellow of The World Academy of Sciences (2023), and member of the Sudanese National Academy of Sciences.

Learn more about Dr. Eltahir’s work at Eltahir Research Group– Highlighted Papers

Publications

• Hotspots for Heat Stress in a Changing Climate: Persian Gulf, South Asia, and Eastern China
• Projecting the Impacts of Climate Change on Malaria

John Aldridge

Lead Principal Investigator

John Aldridge is Assistant Leader of the Human Resilience Technology Group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. His team leverages the research and development expertise of the Laboratory’s nearly 4,000 staff in support of humanitarian assistance, economic and social development, and disaster relief organizations.

Dr. Deborah Campbell

Executive Director

Dr. Deborah Campbell is a Senior Staff Scientist at MIT Lincoln Laboratory.  She co-leads the Laboratory’s work on Environmental Resilience and Natural Hazard Adaptation Technologies. This work brings together the Laboratory’s multidisciplinary expertise in areas including systems analysis, sensing, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and decision support to contribute to novel resilience and adaptation technology and capability development.

In Campbell’s prior work at the Laboratory, she served as an Associate Technology Officer in the Laboratory’s Director’s Office. In her earlier work at the Laboratory, she applied her chemistry expertise to chemical and biological threat detection, forensics and attribution. Campbell earned a BS degree in chemistry from Bates College and a PhD degree in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Publications

• Near-term Regional Climate Change over Bangladesh
• Near-term Regional Climate Change in East Africa
• Mitigation and Adaptation, Explainer, MIT Climate Portal
• Loss and Damage, Explainer, MIT Climate Portal

Dr. Md. Liakath Ali

Principal Investigator of JO-CREWSnet in BRAC

Dr. Md. Liakath Ali is the director of the Climate Change Programme, Urban Development Programme, and Disaster Risk Management Programme at BRAC. Dr. Ali has 37 years of experience with various government, non-government, donor, and UN agencies. He worked for Bangladesh Water Development Board, Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority, UNDP, DFID and Water Aid Bangladesh. Dr. Ali is experienced in integrated water resources management, transboundary water basin management, climate change adaptation, resilience building, disaster risk reduction, urban development, and coastal planning and implementation. His essential qualifications include policy formulation, strategy development and evaluation, and knowledge management. Academically he is an engineer; BSc in Civil Engineering from BUET and Technology, MSc in Hydraulic Engineering from IHE, Delft, The Netherlands, and Ph.D. from the Wageningen University and IHE.

Learn more about Dr. Md. Liakath Ali’s work at BRAC Bangladesh Climate Change Programme

Mr. Abu Sadat Moniruzzaman Khan

As Head of the Climate Change Programme, Mr. Abu Sadat Moniruzzaman Khan is currently in charge of BRAC’s Climate Change Programme (CCP) portfolio of BRAC Bangladesh. He is leading locally-led adaptation initiatives, strategic planning, and partnerships in climate change development nationally and globally. He has over 26 years of experience in project and programme leadership, with expertise in climate adaptation, natural resource management, and livelihood development. Mr. Khan spearheaded the GCF-funded project enhancing adaptive capacities of coastal communities and designed BRAC’s Strategic Partnership Arrangement climate change indicator to integrate climate services into seven development programmes. Mr. Khan combines academic knowledge, action research, and extensive field implementation expertise.

Tapas Ranjan Chakraborty

Deputy Principal Investigator of JO-CREWSnet in BRAC

Tapas Ranjan Chakraborty has been working in the field of climate change and natural resource management and for last 24 years, focusing on Climate Change and Natural Resource Management. He is a Senior Programme Manager of Climate Change Programme of BRAC. He worked with lead environmental organizations and think tanks like, Oxfam, Sustainable Development Resource Center, Bangladesh POUSH, Center for Natural Resource Management, Bangladesh Center for Advanced Studies, etc. He obtained BSc (Honors) and MSc in Zoology.  He has experience of community mobilization, wetland management, and environmental education, etc. He worked with different networks and groups of Climate action and environmental betterment. Tapas has developed many awareness materials on climate change. Bridging the gap between science and policy is his passion.

Publications

• Indigenous Ecosystem based Adaptation Practices: Insights from Medir Haor Community in Brahmanbaria District, Bangladesh
• Gender Perspectives of Energy, Disaster Management and Climate Actions in Rural Bangladesh

Sergey Paltsev

Dr. Sergey Paltsev is a Deputy Director of the MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy and a Senior Research Scientist at the MIT Energy Initiative, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA. His research covers a wide range of topics including energy economics, climate policy and impacts, taxation, advanced energy technologies, and international trade. He is the lead modeler in charge of the MIT Economic Projection and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model of the world and regional economies. Sergey is an Advisory Board Member for the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) Consortium and a Member of the Scientific Steering Committee for the Integrated Assessment Modeling Consortium (IAMC). Dr. Paltsev is an author of more than 120 peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals and books.

Dr. Paltsev is a team leader for the JO-CREWSNET workstream on socioeconomic assessment of climate change impacts in Bangladesh. The overall objective of this workstream is to enhance strategic planning to increase climate resiliency of Bangladesh. Using information on biophysical impacts from the other workstreams of the JO-CREWSNET project, the integrated environmental-socioeconomic framework will enable an assessment of economic impacts of various climate-related changes and types of responsive actions under a wide range of scenarios.

Learn more about Dr. Paltsev’s work at MIT Center for Sustainability and Science Strategy.

Sai Czander Ravela

Dr. Sai Ravela directs MIT’s Earth Signals and Systems Group (ESSG) and is a Principal Research Scientist in Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. He develops cyclone & flood hazard models and generative AI tools for assessing risks and optimizing interventions in various sectors, including agriculture and energy. His work spans autonomous observatories (caos.mit.edu), seismic monitoring, exoplanet detection, fluid imaging (flux.mit.edu), and conservation biometrics (sloop.mit.edu). Dr. Ravela also introduced co-active systems theory for dynamic optimization (dols.mit.edu) and has advanced geometry-driven modeling for complex stochastic processes (stics.mit.edu). He co-founded Windrisktech LLC, which quantifies cyclone risk. Sai has over 100 publications and received MIT’s Infinite Kilometer Award in 2016 for exceptional research and mentorship. Outside of research, he enjoys hiking, gardening, ballroom dancing, and flying airplanes.

The ESSG specializes in methods and assessments of compound cyclone-induced wind, rain, flood, and cascading risk from extreme and seasonal extremes and is an integrated resource for coastal fluvial and pluvial flood modeling. ESSG operates the most extensive community-driven informative salinity observatory and advances climate resilience planning in southwest Bangladesh through a network of community members, scientific experts, and governmental and non-governmental resources.

Learn more about Sai’s work at Tropical Cyclone Induced Climate Risk and Adaptation in Bangladesh

C. Adam Schlosser

Dr. C. Adam Schlosser is currently a Senior Research Scientist and the Deputy Director at the MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy. His primary interests are the modeling, prediction, and risk assessment of the natural, managed, and built water-energy-land systems. Dr. Schlosser has also undertaken studies of hydrology, weather, and climate and their predictability and limits-to-prediction. In doing so, he has worked with a wide range of numerical models, ranging from process-level to global-scale models, as well as observational data for evaluation and complementary analyses. He also has participated in and led international experiments aimed to assess the performance of Earth-system model components and predictions. Other collaborative research activities include extreme events; water-resource risk assessments to inform mitigation and adaptation strategies; biodiversity; global soil sinks of hydrogen, and renewable-energy resource and intermittency assessments.

Michael S. Steckler

Michael S. Steckler received a B.S. degree in Earth and Planetary Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA, in 1976, and a Ph.D. degree in Marine Geophysics from Columbia University, New York, NY, USA, in 1981. He is currently a Lamont Research Professor with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA. He is a geophysicist who works mainly on sedimentary systems with projects related both to tectonics and earthquakes, and to sea level and stratigraphy. A major research interest is vertical motions of the Earth’s surface and their preservation in the sedimentary record. His primary field area is Bangladesh and the surrounding countries.

Steckler has extensive experience from over 20 years of working in Bangladesh, including the climate vulnerable areas in SW Bangladesh. He is using his long experience in Bangladesh to provide geologic and geophysical context for the JO-CREWSnet initiative.  He is providing geophysical data sets on elevation and elevation change, land subsidence and sedimentation in Bangladesh, which are of importance for future projections for flooding and salinity intrusion. He is working with the Water Security group providing new data on the availability of deep fresh groundwater.  He is also contributing to the development of “Adaptation Fortresses”.

Learn more about Michael’s work on Geohazards in Bangladesh and Research Gate.

Publications

• Contribution of campaign GNSS toward parsing subsidence rates by time and depth in coastal Bangladesh
• Comparison of surface elevation change, vertical accretion & shallow subsidence between polders and the natural Sundarbans of the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta plain, Estuaries and Coasts, Special Issue Current Advances in Coastal Wetland Elevation Dynamics
• Synthesis of the distribution of subsidence of the lower Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta, Bangladesh