Newsha K. Ajami is the Chief Research Strategy and Development Officer for the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area (EESA) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. 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. In her role at LBL, she is focused on developing interdisciplinary and impact-focused research initiatives across various domains within EESA.
Dr. Ajami was a two-term gubernatorial appointee to the Bay Area Regional Water Quality Control Board 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; a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute and serves on several state-level and national advisory boards. Before joining LBL she was the founding director of the Stanford Urban Water Policy program and a senior research scholar at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Earlier in her career, she 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.
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 the Amir Kabir University of Technology in Tehran.