Research/Areas of Interest

Water Diplomacy, Principled Pragmatism, Data Driven Decision Making, Climate and Health, Remote Sensing, Flood Forecasting

Education

  • Sc.D., MIT, United States, 1991
  • M.S., University of Maine, United States, 1987
  • B.S., Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 1983

Biography

Shafiqul (Shafik) Islam is professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a professor of water diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He was the first Bernard M. Gordon Senior Faculty Fellow in Engineering at Tufts. Islam seeks to understand, characterize, measure, and model water issues ranging from climate to cholera to water diplomacy, with a focus on scale issues and remote sensing. His research group integrates "theory and practice" and "think and do" to create actionable water knowledge. He works with a diverse network of national and international partners to conduct interdisciplinary collaborative research for a wide range of problems focusing on water, health, and climate. Islam maintains an active national and international consulting and training practice, including: flood forecasting in India; national water planning in Bangladesh; water policy planning for ExxonMobil; and advising South Asian Consortium of Interdisciplinary Water initiatives. He has acted as a consultant to the World Bank, United States Geological Survey, Proctor and Gamble, and a number of other governmental and non-governmental organizations.

Shafiqul Islam's research interests include water diplomacy, climate challenges, data driven decision making, and principled pragmatism.