Our Team

Dipak Gyawali is currently Pragya (Academician) of the Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (NAST) and guest senior research scholar with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria. He is also the Chair of Interdisciplinary Analysts (a private research firm specialising in quantitative and qualitative social sciences). He was also a founding member of the non-profit Nepal Water Conservation Foundation established three decades ago.

A hydroelectric power engineer (Moscow Energy Institute) and a political economist (UC Berkeley), Gyawali served as Nepal’s Minister of Water Resources in 2002/03 and initiated community electricity as well as the first in-country review of the World Commission on Dams report in light of Nepali laws. He has chaired or served in advisory boards and review missions of various international organisations including the EU’s water research review between FP4 to FP6, UNESCO’s International Hydrological Program IHP-6, UNESCO IHE-Delft, Coca Cola’s  International Environmental Advisory Board, US Pacific Northwest National Lab’s study of Human Choice and Climate Change, Myanmar’s Ayeyarwadi IRBM, Mekong River Commission, World Bank’s Inspection Panel, Stockholm International Water Institute, UNESCO’s World Water Assessment Programme, and IDS Sussex’s STEPs Centre.

He conducts interdisciplinary research on technology-society interface from perspectives of cultural theory. His latest major publications are The Water-Energy-Food Nexus (co-author) (Routledge, 2019) and Aid, Technology and Development: The Lessons from Nepal (co-editor) (Routledge, 2017).