AMARTYA
SAHA
3085 Biological Labs,
16 Divinity Ave, Cambridge, MA 02138,USA
Phone: 617-495-4796
E-mail: asaha@oeb.harvard.edu
OBJECTIVES
Achieve a deeper understanding of watershed hydrological and biogeochemical processes; contribute towards sustainable watershed management and conservation of riparian and aquatic ecosystems in the subtropics and tropics.
EDUCATION
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August,
1997 |
INDIANA UNIVERSITY, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Bloomington, Indiana Master of Science, Environmental Science. Areas of concentration: Watershed ecosystem processes, hazardous waste management |
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November,
1992 |
INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, Bombay, India Bachelor of Technology, Metallurgical Engineering |
WORK EXPERIENCE
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Program coordinator and webmaster for the interdisciplinary NSF-IGERT program in Biomechanics.
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Programmer and data analysis for a landuse and watershed study in Valdivia, Chile. |
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October,
1997 to May, 2003 |
Morningstar, Chicago, Illinois Programmer Analyst¨ Developed
programs (FoxPro, C#) to access very large databases (FoxPro, SQL Server) and
perform calculations and statistical analysis to supply financial data to
various clients including the media, mutual fund companies and research
institutions in a variety of formats. ¨ Database
administration and maintenance of production processes that send data files
to clients on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. |
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May,
1996 to September, 1996 |
Department of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana Field Assistant¨ Conducted
study examining Reproductive Success of Neotropical Migrant Songbirds under
different Forest Management Practices in Yellowwood State Forest and Hoosier
National Forest, Indiana. |
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June,
1993 to July, 1995 |
Academy of Development Science (ADS), Maharashtra, India. ADS is an NGO who have been working since 1978 towards ecologically
sustainable development and empowerment of the tribal communities in the
foothills of the western ghats mountains in western India. Project Staff, Watershed Restoration Program. ¨ Surveyed Jambruk (District Raigad, India) watershed for siting of masonry dam for water harvesting ¨ Implemented soil and water conservation measures along with local communities in the Shilar river watershed. Research Fellow¨ Conducted two year study of succession of aquatic communities in the seasonal Shilar river; developed foundation of a biotic index for rapid assessment of water quality in the Western Ghats foothills of Maharashtra. ¨ Conducted lab and field trials to evaluate two different composting techniques, one using earthworms. ¨ Assisted in indigenous fruit tree variety collection from different organizations and farmers; created a computer database for the Horticulture Gene Park as part of the Reforestation/Sustainable Income Generation projects ¨ Illustrated technical publications on rice morphology, biological pest control and ethnobotany of bamboo and prepared conference exhibits for several projects of the Academy |
Information Technology
Skills
· Database programming and design: 6 years working experience with DOS and Visual FoxPro, SQL Server, MS Access
· Object oriented programming and application development – using FoxPro and C# .NET to create class libraries accessed by many users in Morningstar.
· Structured Programming: have written programs in Fortran 77 for engineering applications at I.I.T Bombay; have also written programs in Visual FoxPro for ecologists at the University of Illinois at Chicago to facilitate their data analysis, several of which have been published in scientific ecological journals. Currently am collaborating with a researcher at the Dept of Biology, Harvard in developing a model of xylem vessel distribution in rattans using Python and image analysis techniques. Am also using IDL and Matlab for visualization of hydrological data.
· Geographic Information Systems: have created several Coverages and a Digital Elevation Model using ARC/INFO as part of a GIS for Tefft Nature Preserve, Indiana managed by The Nature Conservancy, Indiana.
· Web development: have worked with HTML and Macromedia Dreamweaver to create webpages. Have also created XML files for clients and written DTDs for validation of the XML documents using Altova XMLSpy.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
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March,
2000 to March,
2002 |
Lake Forest
College, Lake Forest, Illinois Guest Lecturer¨ Led discussions with an undergraduate class (Environmental Worldviews) about environmental problems in India and Nepal. |
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January,
1997 to May,1997 |
School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. Associate Instructor¨ Assisted teaching a graduate level course (Applied Mathematics in Environmental Science) that used calculus for modeling ecological systems and environmental processes. |
VOLUNTEER EXPERIENCE
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August
2003 to present |
New England
Aquarium, Boston,
Massachusetts
Assisting aquarists in the Cold Marine, Temperate and Tropical Freshwater galleries; to get exposure to the systems that maintain water quality and flow conditions for diverse habitats within the above broad aquatic ecoregions |
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June
2003 to July 2003 |
Fairchild Tropical Garden, Coral Gables, Florida Scanning and
readying data for online virtual herbarium of 100,000 specimens of plants
from Florida and the Caribbean.. Assisted with creating data entry screens
for entering plant species collection data into MS Access databases.
Participated in an outplanting session for an endangered species. |
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April
1998 to November 2000 |
Morton Arboretum, Lisle, Illinois and the University of Illinois, Chicago
Assisted with an ecological study on prairie ecosystems with the aim to create viable restoration methods. |
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January,
1993 to May, 1993 |
Sustainable Development Programme, Kodaikanal, India
Collected baseline water quality data and correlated that with land-use patterns in watersheds in Palni Hills, Tamil Nadu, India. |
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August,
1991 to November, 1992 |
Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India Organized reforestation program in catchment area of Vihar Lake, a water supply source for Greater Bombay Metropolitan Area |
A brief statement of my broad interests and objectives:
My years of
traveling and staying in the Himalayas and Western ghats mountains of India and
Nepal has inspired me to work towards safeguarding the ecological conditions
for all life (human included) in these increasingly imperiled ecosystems. After
completion of my undergraduate degree in engineering, I worked with an NGO
(ADS, please see under work experience section) in an integrated watershed
management program for two years. Feeling the need for a systematic foundation
in environmental processes, I obtained an MS in environmental science from
Indiana University, with coursework on hydrology, soil science, fate and
transport modeling, waste treatment and management, wetland and aquatic ecology
and chemistry.
Due to personal
reasons that restricted me to Chicago, I took up a programming position with
Morningstar, a leading global investment research firm. One benefit of this
experience has been gaining a facility working with huge databases and
developing efficient programs, that have to compute statistical and
mathematical tasks on dozens of fields and millions of rows of data, all in a
window of a few hours so as to enable the newspapers get their daily data. Data
Quality is critical.
My obligations being over, I now plan to undertake a PhD in watershed hydrology, to afford me the time for indepth study and work as well as opportunities to interact with researchers. My long-term goals are twofold:
1. contribute towards an understanding of watershed processes in the tropics, where a systematic and coordinated
research effort is practically just beginning (considering the vast heterogeneity and variability of systems there).
2. involvement in the development of region-specific sustainable watershed management plans and in the implementation of such programs, given the fast pace of degradation in all parts of the tropics.