Leadership

---

 Hemant is a development professional, having spent 8 years in corporate IT and around 10 years in natural resource management, hydrological modelling and policy making. He started his professional life as a software engineer, switched gears to policy studies at Prayas (Pune) and then to water resource management at IIT Bombay. He received PhD from Centre for Technology Alternatives in Rural Areas, IIT Bombay. His work mainly focused on strengthening the scientific base of the water resources planning at village level. The work included understanding of water stress, analysis of state policies and planning frameworks, study of hydrological models and design of GIS-based scientific planning tools such as water budgets. His water budget framework was adopted by the Government of Maharashtra in their flagship watershed project, Jalyukt Shivar Yojana. Currently he is working as a Project Manager with IITB team for Government of Maharashtra’s Project On Climate Resilient Agriculture, funded by World Bank.

Asim is a software engineer with over 10 years of experience with leading corporate companies such as VMware Inc., Pivotal Inc., EMC Corporation, GS Lab, Persistent Systems, etc. He specialises primarily in big data, data science and writing software for open source database engines such as Greenplum and PostgreSQL. 

After a decade spent in the Bay Area he left his high-earning job and came back to Pune to offer and apply his knowledge to development problems such as water, transport, energy etc. Currently he is the IT lead at IIT Bombay’s team of consultants working on Government of Maharashtra’s Project On Climate Resilient Agriculture. At the moment, he enjoys making use of QGIS and PostGIS to design effective and user-friendly tools for the planners to enable climate resilience in agriculture in Marathwada and Vidarbha regions of Maharashtra. He would love to hear from you at @asimrp (GitLab and GitHub).

Gopal is a farmer from Hingoli. He is also doing PhD at IIT Bombay’s Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas. His research is focused on ‘Role of Community, State and Science in Irrigation Planning'. Gopal embodies a unique combination of top-notch research along with a deep rooted connection to soil and peasants of rural Maharashtra. Prior to joining IIT Bombay, Gopal worked as faculty at engineering college for three years. Gopal holds a masters degree (M.Tech) in Fluid and Thermal Engineering from College of Engineering, Pune. His current research work deals with Agricultural Extension Practices, Irrigation Planning and Surface Water Management, Agriculture Water Balance. During his PhD fieldwork he worked with a local NGO (Yuva Mitra). He has experience conducting training sessions for students, NGO staff and government officers. 

  Chirag has been working in the development sector with the government on multi-disciplinary projects focused on rural areas for four years. He has completed his bachelors in Textile Technology from VJTI, Mumbai and holds a masters degree in ‘Technology and Development’ from CTARA, IIT Bombay. For the last two years, he has been working as ‘Project Research Engineer’ on ‘Project on Climate Resilient Agriculture’ (PoCRA), a World Bank funded Government of Maharashtra project. Prior to that, he has worked with the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India as research fellow on ‘Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana’ (PMGSY), a flagship program of GoI for rural roads.

Vishal is a development professional working in sectors like, water and sanitation, agriculture, education for the last 9 years. He holds a postgraduate degree in “Technology and development” from CTARA, IIT Bombay with a focus on water supply systems. He was instrumental in setting up a Centre for Technology for Himalayan Region at IIT Mandi, in a very early age of his career. He was then associated with Unnat Bharat Abhiyan (UBA) of MHRD, GoI and Unnat Maharashtra Abhiyan (UMA) of GoM in design and implementation of the schemes. Subsequently, he led an IIT Bombay team, to assess GoM flagship watershed management Jal Yukt Shivar (JYS) scheme on the direction of Hon. High Court of Maharashtra. Later on, worked as Program Manager of Technology and Development Solutions Cell (TDSC), which is a research and consultancy arm of CTARA, IIT Bombay. Currently, he is working with IITB for a World Bank funded, PoCRA project of GoM in the field of agriculture and water.