Aditi Mukherji, the first recipient of the Norman Borlaug Field Award by the World Food Prize Foundation, will present Central College’s annual World Food Prize Lecture from 11 a.m. to noon Tuesday, Nov. 2.
The free event will be virtual and available via Zoom.
The World Food Prize is the foremost international award recognizing individuals who have increased the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world. Central has proudly hosted the lecture for many years in conjunction with the World Food Prize Conference in Des Moines, Iowa.
“The World Food Prize Lecture is an opportunity for our students to hear from someone who lives out Central’s mission to instill values of responsible citizenship,” says Brian Peterson, Central’s associate dean of curriculum and faculty development. “Hearing from world-class researchers, scholars and activists helps students begin to see possible futures for themselves as truly lifelong learners and society changers.”
Mukherji is a principal researcher at the International Water Management Institute, where she led the Water and Air Theme at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in Nepal. Mukherji is a coordinating lead author of the Water Chapter in the Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a member of Core Writing Team of the IPCC’s AR6 Synthesis Report.
Her areas of specialization are groundwater governance, energy-irrigation nexus, climate change adaptation and community management of water resources. She has worked in South Asia, including the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, Nile Basin and in Central Asia. Mukherji has published more than 60 peer-reviewed research papers and three edited books. In 2012, she was awarded the Inaugural Norman Borlaug Field Award, endowed by the Rockefeller Foundation and given by the World Food Prize Foundation.
Mukherji is a human geographer by training and holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge University, United Kingdom, where she was a Gates Cambridge Scholar.