Humanitarian Water Engineering: Priorities for Health in Humanitarian Emergencies, with Syed Imran Ali
Today, more than 120 million people around the world are forcibly displaced and in need of urgent humanitarian assistance—the highest levels ever recorded in history. When people are displaced, the normal functioning of life falls away and everything becomes a matter of survival. People need protection, food, shelter, medicine, water—and providing these essentials is the central focus of humanitarian response efforts. In this seminar, Dr. Ali will present the fundamental role that water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) plays in controlling infectious diseases in emergencies and the work that his group at the Humanitarian Water Engineering Lab is doing to bridge the humanitarian and academic worlds and solve critical water and health challenges in emergencies. Through this presentation, Dr. Ali will lay out a vision for the newly emerging field of Humanitarian Engineering and the role that all disciplines have to play in responding to the unprecedented and overlapping crises we face globally today.
In preparation for the seminar, Dr. Ali has recommended reading the article Gaza demands a new kind of Humanitarian action, published in The New Humanitarian on May 30, 2024.
Speaker Profile
Dr. Syed Imran Ali is an experienced aid worker and engineering researcher. He has worked as a water and sanitation specialist and led operational research with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in South Sudan, Pakistan, Jordan, Rwanda, Uganda, and elsewhere. At York University, Dr. Ali directs the Humanitarian Water Engineering (HWE) Lab at the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research and is Adjunct Professor in the Lassonde School of Engineering. Dr. Ali draws on his experience as a humanitarian responder to design and lead collaborative research with operational partners to solve urgent water and health challenges in emergencies. He has over 15 publications in leading engineering and global health journals; 60+ presentations at practitioner, policymaker, and scientific fora; and has held over a dozen research grants totalling >$2m. Dr. Ali specializes in translating engineering research into operational tools that advance public health engineering practice, such as the Safe Water Optimization Tool, a machine learning-enabled water quality modelling platform that helps humanitarian responders ensure water safety in emergency settings. Dr. Ali has a PhD in environmental engineering from the University of Guelph and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley.
Register below and join us on Wednesday, September 25, at 1 p.m. ET
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