Dr Gawsia Wahidunnessa Chowdhury is committed to conserving the aquatic ecosystems and threatened species of Bangladesh. In particular, she focuses on assessing the extent of and the risks from plastic pollution, which is closely linked to climate change. Microplastics and other plastics enter the waterways in Bangladesh from fishing nets, among other sources, and are harmful to threatened species and habitats. Dr Chowdhury is leading an effort to educate women in poor and marginalized fishing communities about how discarded Nylon-6 fishing nets can be turned into value-added products such as carpets and clothing, creating an alternative income source for the communities while protecting the wetland habitats.

Dr Chowdhury received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Zoology from the University of Dhaka and joined Noakhali Science and Technology University in 2006. She was awarded the prestigious Commonwealth Academic Staff Scholarship to study for her PhD in Zoology at the University of Cambridge, completing it in 2012. Since 2013 she has worked at the University of Dhaka, teaching animal diversity, wetland ecology and other topics in zoology.

She has received many awards and grants, including a Wildlife Conservation Society Fellowship. She is a board member of the conservation organization WildTeam and member of the Zoological Society of Bangladesh, and has been appointed regional co-chair of the South Asian Invertebrate Specialist Group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). She is also a member of the Commission on Education and Communication and the IUCN Species Survival Commission. She is an alumna of the Aquatic Ecology Group, University of Cambridge.

Dr Chowdhury was the country lead for the National Geographic “Sea to Source: Ganges” expedition in 2019–2020. She was responsible for assembling a research team and organizing stakeholder meetings and for all national operations and logistics. Following the expedition, she led a World Bank-funded pilot project to turn the research findings from the expedition into a community-based solution involving several international technical partners. Dr Chowdhury aspires to get more women engaged in science education and conservation efforts in Bangladesh, and to make scientific findings understandable to the public:

Dr. Subrina’s research focuses on the modeling of thermal and electronic transport in nanoscale materials and the applications of these materials in nanoscale devices. She is particularly interested in nanomaterials with high thermal conductivity, such as graphene (a form of carbon), that make it useful in heat mitigation. Fast, high-performance electronic devices tend to suffer from overheating, which causes performance degradation and shortens the life of the devices. Use of high heat-carrying materials in electronic device design can provide a solution to this issue. Dr. Subrina is also focused on how physical properties of materials change as devices are increasingly scaled down to the nano level; identifying nanomaterials with the right thermal and electronic properties for this scale can lead to new technologies such as low-power nanoelectronics, high-efficiency solar cells, and thermoelectric power generators. Dr. Subrina received her PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of California Riverside in 2011.

Her research has been published in many prestigious journals including Nature Materials, Nature Scientific Report, and the Journal of Applied Physics. She has been honoured with a number of awards throughout her career, including the Best Paper Award at the 2018 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) WIECON-ECE conference and the Young Scientist Award from the Bangladesh Academy of Sciences and TWAS, the World Academy of Sciences, in 2016. She is also the recipient of the Dean’s Distinguished Fellowship from the University of California, Riverside, and is a TWAS Young Affiliate. She has been involved in organizing many conferences, workshops and tutorials, and is actively engaged in several national and international professional organizations, including as executive committee member and Chair (in 2017) of the IEEE EDS/SSCS Bangladesh Chapter and editorial board member of Nature Scientific Report. Dr. Subrina is dedicated to building the technological capacity of women in engineering in Bangladesh, and has served as Affinity Group Treasurer (in 2015) of the Women in Engineering group of IEEE Bangladesh. She is also involved in various kinds of consultancy services in the public and private sectors of Bangladesh.

Dr. Tabassum Mumtaz is an environmental microbiologist from Bangladesh and works on the conversion of biomass and other waste materials into useful compounds using bacteria. Her work contributes to directly removing harmful materials from the environment as well as generating renewable energy in the process. She specializes in producing polyhydroxyalkanotes (PHAs), bioplastics produced by special bacteria that are cultivated from compost, food waste and wastewater, such as the effluents from palm oil production. She received her PhD in Environmental Biotechnology from Universiti Putra Malaysia, under an OWSD PhD fellowship. After a post-doctoral position at the University Kebangsaan Malaysia, she returned to the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission, where in addition to her research as a Principal Scientific Officer, she trains students in laboratory techniques for microbiology. She has acted as a reviewer and has publications in several high-impact journals. She is the author of “Changes in the properties of LD-PE during biodegradation in soil.”

Dr. Mumtaz’s current research focuses on the remediation of wastewater by gamma radiation and the capability of radio-resistant bacteria for PHA production. In the future, she hopes to implement projects related to biohydrogen and bioethanol production from biomass. She believes that focusing on pollution abatement and renewable energy and valuable green bioproducts can be achieved through collaborations with industries such as textile dyeing. These developments will have a big impact on the energy consumption of Bangladesh in the near future.

Dr Tasrina Rabia Choudhury is a chemist from Bangladesh with expertise ranging from water quality improvement to environmental restoration, from climate change to risk assessment and environmental modeling, and more. She is working to pioneer novel approaches in the remediation techniques of toxic elements from wastewater and drinking water, ensuring the delivery of safe drinking water to underserved communities. Tasrina has actively engaged with local communities, implementing awareness campaigns that educate them about the importance of hygiene and efficient water use.