Veena Srinivasan

Veena Srinivasan joined Stanford University's IPER Program as part of the first cohort of students in 2002.

Her research interests include inter-sectoral water allocation and impacts of urbanization on water resources.

Veena’s research site is the rapidly growing but water-starved city of Chennai in South India. Water supply in Chennai is a complex web of public supply, private supply, and self-supply via consumer’s wells.

Veena’s research develops the theory and implements it as an integrated model of urban water supply. The integrated model incorporates the water market, the groundwater aquifer system, the public supply system, and landuse changes. The research will ultimately help policy makers compare a suite of policy options ranging from improved management of recharge, rational tariff policy and supply augmentation.

Veena Srinivasan is originally from Bombay. A recipient of the Government of India's National Talent Scholarship in Science, she received her undergraduate degree in Engineering Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. Her senior thesis on applying solar photovoltaic technology in rural conditions, followed by a research stint studying natural gas demand in India, first sparked her interest in environment and sustainable development. She accepted the Presidential Graduate Fellowship from Boston University to pursue an M.A in Energy and Environmental Analyses.

On completing her Master's, Veena returned to India to work in both the corporate and non-profit sector for three years examining energy, water, and forest conservation policies. Later, at the Pacific Institute in California she conducted research on the potential for water conservation in California, and prepared case studies of water privatization across the world.

Veena has been involved with various non-profit organizations in environment and development including Asha for Education, and the Greening South Asian Restaurants Program. She has organized a speaker series on Water Policy in Developing Countries at Stanford, and is a member of the Stanford Chapter of Engineer's for a Sustainable World.

Following her degree at Stanford, Veena would like to pursue career opportunities that would allow her to participate in and influence the policy debate on water resources management in the developing world.