Mysuru: Dr. Abhishek A. Pathak, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, The National Institute of Engineering (NIE), Mysuru, has been selected for the prestigious ‘SERB International Research Experience’ Fellowship to work at Hydrological Science Laboratory, Goddard Space Flight Centre, NASA, USA.

This Fellowship is supported by Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), Department of Science and Technology, Government of India.

Dr. Pathak got the Fellowship for duration of six months to work on development of soil moisture based drought frame work.

India has been facing many severe droughts which have caused drastic reduction in crop yield causing huge economic loss. Assessing agricultural drought in varied climate at finer resolution can still be trickier because of its multifaceted connection with groundwater, evapotranspiration and rainfall, etc.

To address this challenge, Dr. Pathak will work on synergetic assimilation of soil moisture and hydrometeorological variables to develop a comprehensive combined drought monitoring framework for India. The proposed research will also play a vital role in providing a base for various studies, which will be carried out with the up-coming NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR) mission scheduled to be launched in 2023.

Dr. Pathak is also serving as the Coordinator for the ‘Centre for Water Resources (CWR)’ in the college. The CWR pioneered the establishment of Kumaradhara Field Hydrological Laboratory and experimental watersheds in the Western Ghats of India to monitor hydrometeorological variables with its sophisticated instruments and equipment.