Abishek S Narayan is a transdisciplinary researcher in the field of water for development. He leads innovative applied urban water research projects in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Abishek's research has received wide recognition and been taken up in global UN Reports and supported national policies on water and sanitation. He is currently based at Eawag - ETH Zürich. Previously, he worked with the World Bank's Water Global Program and the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities Program.
Abishek has a background in Engineering and Policy from ETH Zürich and Oxford University. His interests in water came from founding the Clean Adyar Initiative, a citizen action group for restoring a river in Chennai, India. He is a visiting lecturer at IHE Delft, EPF Lausanne and TU Munich and Berlin. He is also an instructor in a popular Coursera MOOC. He also co-founded the Swiss Water Partnership Youth and the Global Youth Movement on Water that mobilized over 100,000 youth in 2023 towards the UN Water Conference in New York.
Abishek is a recipient of the UK Govt's Commonwealth Scholarship and German Govt's Green Talents award among others. He is on the core group and boards of global water networks such as the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance, the Swiss Water Partnership, UN and IWA expert groups. He is also an award winning science communicator and has given over 100 presentations, panel moderations, key-notes and public lectures.
Abishek is a Global Shaper at the World Economic Forum's Zurich Hub.
