Shafiqul Islam
Academic Leave
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 a 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. He is the Founding Director of the Water Diplomacy Program and Data-Driven Decision-Making @Tufts. His research focuses on the availability, access, and allocation of water in the context of climate change, health, and geopolitics. By synthesizing science, engineering, policy, and negotiation, Dr. Islam works to create actionable knowledge under conditions of uncertainty, ambiguity, and complexity.
His pioneering work on Engineering Diplomacy—a transdisciplinary approach to solving complex societal problems—brings together systems thinking, complexity science, and principled pragmatism to bridge disciplinary and institutional divides. In recognition of this work, he has been named a 2025–26 Harvard Radcliffe Fellow. 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 the Middle East and North Africa; and advising the South Asian Consortium of Interdisciplinary Water initiatives. He has acted as a consultant to the World Bank, United States Geological Survey, Procter & Gamble, and several other governmental and non-governmental organizations.
Dr. Islam is an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and recipient of the Prince Sultan International Water Prize for Creativity. He has authored over 100 publications and five books, including a seminal volume on water diplomacy translated into Chinese. His work has been featured in the BBC World Service, Guardian, Nature, New York Times, The Boston Globe, Yale E360, and others.
His pioneering work on Engineering Diplomacy—a transdisciplinary approach to solving complex societal problems—brings together systems thinking, complexity science, and principled pragmatism to bridge disciplinary and institutional divides. In recognition of this work, he has been named a 2025–26 Harvard Radcliffe Fellow. 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 the Middle East and North Africa; and advising the South Asian Consortium of Interdisciplinary Water initiatives. He has acted as a consultant to the World Bank, United States Geological Survey, Procter & Gamble, and several other governmental and non-governmental organizations.
Dr. Islam is an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and recipient of the Prince Sultan International Water Prize for Creativity. He has authored over 100 publications and five books, including a seminal volume on water diplomacy translated into Chinese. His work has been featured in the BBC World Service, Guardian, Nature, New York Times, The Boston Globe, Yale E360, and others.