Steering Committee Member, WELL Labs
Dr Upmanu Lall is a leading hydrologist and water systems expert with more than four decades of experience in hydrology, climate dynamics, water resources and risk management. He is the Director of the Water Institute at Arizona State University’s Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory and a Professor in the School of Complex Adaptive Systems.
Prior to joining Arizona State University in 2024, he was the Alan and Carol Silberstein Professor of Engineering at Columbia University and Founding Director of the Columbia Water Center. He has led major initiatives on global water sustainability, flooding and water security, working with governments, development institutions and the private sector.
His expertise spans hydrology, climate dynamics, water resource systems, applied statistics, data science and sustainability. He holds a B.Tech in Civil Engineering from IIT Kanpur and a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has received the Henry Darcy Medal and other major awards for his contributions to hydrology and water science.