Biography

Dr. Newsha Ajami is an internationally recognized expert in sustainable water resource management, smart cities, water policy, and finance. Currently, she serves as the chief strategic development officer for research in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area (EESA) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL), where she leads research on the intersection of water, energy, and climate. Over the years, she has led groundbreaking research on the impacts of resilient urban water and hydrologic systems.

In addition to her role at LBL, Dr. Ajami holds other key leadership positions. She is a mayoral appointee to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and served two terms as a gubernatorial appointee to the Bay Area Regional Water Quality Control Board. She contributes to the National Academies Board on Water Science and Technology and serves as a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. Furthermore, Dr. Ajami is an active member of several state-level and national advisory boards and also serves as director on both for-profit and nonprofit boards.

Prior to LBL, Dr. Ajami founded and directed the Stanford Urban Water Policy program and served as a senior research scholar at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. She also held a prestigious Science, Policy, and Technology fellowship at the California State Senate’s Natural Resources and Water Committee, where she helped shape water and energy legislation.

Dr. Ajami has published many highly cited pioneering research articles and co-authored three books. Her work has been referenced in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, NPR, and PBS.

Education

Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering from the University of California, Irvine; Master of Science in hydrology and water resources from the University of Arizona; Bachelor of Science in civil engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology in Tehran.