Sumita Bhattacharyya

Research Interest:

My interests lie in water pollution and its mitigation, presently looking into sources of surface water pollution and strategies to mitigate them. I am also interested in the water quality monitoring for surface water bodies, focusing on urban water bodies such as lakes. Presently, my research involves studying the nutrient budget and developing water management criteria for urban lakes in Bengaluru.

In my free time, I like to paint and do photography. 

Education:

• Post-Graduation in Masters in Environment Management from Forest Research Institute, Dehradun in 2015
• Under-Graduation in Bachelors (Hons.) in Botany from Miranda House, Delhi University in 2013.

Grant:

Received the Bengaluru Sustainability Forum (BSF) Small Grant Program 2019 with Jala Poshan Trust for the project titled "Developing Citizen-Relevant Water Quality Criteria for Urban Lakes in Bengaluru". The project will be developing a working definition of clean and healthy urban lakes, with corresponding water quality criteria and targets, to ensure the sustainability of community needs and urban biodiversity. Further collaboration is being planned with the BSF Small Grant Program 2019 Lake Health Index project.

Outreach Activity:

Conducted a workshop on using plants to monitor water quality in Science Gallery Bengaluru online exhibition PHYTOPIA. The workshop was titled 'Sentinals of the lake: Aquatic plants as people’s guide for water quality monitoring'. The participants undertook simple experiments at their homes to understand how local aquatic plants respond to water containing different quantities of organic pollutants. The observations made would then help the participants understand the monitor the changes in the water quality in the lakes of Bengaluru.