Pooja Prasad is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Land and Water Management at the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education. Her research focus is water and agriculture for food security in water-scarce, semi-arid regions of Asia and Africa. Her specific research interests include: agricultural water management in drylands, farmer-led irrigation, climate adaptation, social-ecological systems thinking and system dynamic modeling.
Pooja's postdoctoral research explores the application of adaptive investment pathways approach in the context of smallholder farmer-led irrigation along the sand-river aquifers of Kenya. Her research is part of the Nature Based Water Infrastructure for Global Goals (NaBWIG) project.
Her teaching supports courses in irrigation management, specifically on social-ecological systems view of irrigation, and on research design. She is also involved in the mentoring of MSc students at IHE.
Pooja holds a Ph.D. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India (2019). Her thesis, which received the Excellence in Ph.D. research award for the period 2018-2020 from IIT Bombay, focuses on social-ecological systems analysis of agricultural intensification in the drought-prone regions of Maharashtra, India. The thesis contributed to the Government of Maharashtra Project on Climate Resilient Agriculture (PoCRA) that is implemented in 15 vulnerable districts of the state. Prior to this, Pooja worked as a researcher in the drinking water group at CTARA IIT Bombay where she analyzed socio-economic and technical causes for rural drinking water stress in the region. Pooja has a Masters’ degree from Stanford University and a B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering from IIT Bombay.
Publications
A complete list of publications can be found in Google Scholar.