Date: Feb 5 2021 by Newsha Ajami
Time : 12:00-01:00 EST
Registration: HERE
Title: Water Infrastructure financing
Abstract: The water sector needs to build a diverse financing portfolio and novel governance tools that could support the sector’s shifting paradigm and enable its transition into the 21st century. In this seminar I will discuss a novel financing framework we have developed for the water sector based on some of the existing financing mechanisms that have been used in the energy sector to fund distributed energy solutions at various scales. I will also touch on how new performance measures are essential in further securing access to affordable and innovative financing solutions.
Bio: Newsha K. Ajami, is the director of Urban Water Policy with Stanford University’s Water in the West program. A leading expert in sustainable water resource management, smart cities, and the water-energy-food nexus, she uses data science principles to study the human and policy dimensions of urban water and hydrologic systems. Her research throughout the years has been interdisciplinary and impact focused.
Dr. Ajami served as a gubernatorial appointee to the Bay Area Regional Water Quality Control Board for two terms and is currently a mayoral appointee to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. She is a member of the National Academies Board on Water Science and Technology. Dr. Ajami also serves on a number of state-level and national advisory boards. Before joining Stanford, she worked as a senior research scholar at the Pacific Institute, and served as a Science and Technology fellow at the California State Senate’s Natural Resources and Water Committee where she worked on various water and energy related legislation.
She has published many highly cited peer-reviewed articles, co authored two books, and contributed opinion pieces to the New York Times, San Jose Mercury and the Sacramento Bee. Dr. Ajami received her Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the UC, Irvine, an M.S. in Hydrology and Water Resources from the University of Arizona, and a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Amir Kabir University of Technology in Tehran.
