picture 1

About me

Hemu Kharel Kafle, PhD is a scientist at the Kathmandu Institute of Applied Sciences (KIAS) and Head at the Center for Water and Atmospheric Research within it. She graduated as an Environmentalist from the Ben-Gurion University (Israel) and obtained her PhD in Remote Sensing from the Nagoya University (Japan). Dr. Kafle’s research interest is in the extreme climatic condition like drought and desertification and its impact on agriculture and water resources. She has also been working on air and soil pollution of Kathmandu valley. Her post-doctoral research at Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel) focused mainly on afforested forest at the extreme climatic condition. Her research career thus far has resulted in several peer-reviewed publications with a dozen of them as a lead author in high-impact journals. Felicitated by The World Academy of Science (TWAS) as Young Scientist in 2014, she was one of the first women to receive the Early Career Women Scientist fellowship in 2018.
Currently, she is also working on commercializing her research products, “Low-cost automatic weather station”, build by her research team at KIAS, Nepal and “Nano-Pad”, (Body warming device) developed in Kathmandu University. Dr. Kafle is also passionate about public engagement with science and is serving as an honorable member of Planning commission, Gandaki Province. A mother of two, Dr. Kafle is also a founding president of the Organization of Women Scientist in Developing World- Nepal Chapter (OWSN) working to inspire a stronger female future for Nepalese science while empowering the existing generation of women scientists.
Dr. Kafle’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hemu-kafle-0b88b884/

icon-membership
Other Memberships/Affiliations
Organization of Women Scientist Nepal (OWSN)

Degrees:

2009
Doctorate     Physics