Prof. dr. Yoshihide Wada is Director of Biodiversity and Natural Resources (BNR) Program at Interntional Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). He has a joint appointment as a (endowed) Chair Professor of Global Water and Food Security at the Department of Physical Geography, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Dr. Wada obtained his PhD degree with distinction (Cum Laude) at Utrecht University in October, 2013. His completed PhD projects include estimating global water use and water availability by using a global hydrological and water resources model. His work also includes estimating and projecting global water scarcity, and assessing the sustainability of global groundwater resources. Some of his work has appeared in Nature, Nature Geoscience, Nature Climate Change, and PNAS.
He currently manages science development at IIASA’s BNR program (100 staffs) and his current research projects include a global assessment of sustainable solutions achieving SDGs under socioeconomic and climate change, and increasing water scarcity, Water Futures and Solutions (WFaS) initiative, the inter-sectoral climate change impacts assessments (ISIpedia), supporting risk assessment and adaptation at multiple spatial scales (COMICC), European climate prediction system (EUCP) and Food-water-energy for Urban Sustainable Environments (FUSE). He also leads several development oriented projects with development banks (World Bank, Inter-American Bank, Asian Development Bank, Global Environmental Facility, Austrian Development Agency) in order to translate robust scientific knowledge to local and regional policy development (e.g., East Africa Water Development Plan, Zambezi Basin Water Development Plan). He has participated in and led a number of international projects including European GLOWASIS (Global Water Scarcity Information Service) Project, ISI-MIP (Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project), LandMIP (Land Modelling Intercomparison Project), World Resources Institute (WRI) Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas, and EartH2Observe (Global Earth Observation for Integrated Water Resource Assessment). He has also involved in in the Fifth and Sixth Assessment Report (AR5/6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (Working Group I/II). He is also a lead author of the UNEP GEO-6 (Global Environmental Outlook) for Freshwater.
He is the recipient of the Horton (Hydrology) Research Grant by the American Geophysical Union (AGU; 2012), European Geoscience Union (EGU) Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Early Career Scientists (2018) as well as American Geophysical Union (AGU) Hydrologic Science Early Career Award (2018). He has also been awarded the prestigious Hydrological Award from the Dutch Hydrological Society (NHV; 2017), the NICE STEP (NISTEP) Award from Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan (MEXT) and National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (2017), and the Young Scientist Prize from the MEXT (2018). Dr. Wada has been invited to more than 200 conferences worldwide. He is an (associate) editor of Water Resources Research (AGU), Environmental Research Communications (ERC), One Earth (Cell Press) and Hydrological Research Letters. Dr. Wada has (co)authored about 200 publications, 150 of which appeared in international peer-reviewed journals. The citation of these peer-reviewed papers exceeds 2300 each year. He has been selected as a highly cited researcher (top 1%) by Web of Science/Scopus.