Uttam Babu Shrestha is a research fellow at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia and founding director of the Global Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies, Nepal. He has completed a PhD in Environmental Science from the University of Massachusetts Boston, USA and has two masters’ degrees, one in Geographic Information Technology from Northeastern University, USA and the other in Botany from Tribhuvan University, Nepal.
He was a recipient of Outstanding Graduate Student Award for his PhD at the University of Massachusetts Boston in 2014 and the Graduate Academic Excellence Award for his Master’s degree at the Northeastern University in 2008. He has received several research grants and published more than 45 peer-reviewed papers, one book, and hundreds of articles in popular press. His research interests are climate change and its impact on ecosystems and species, biodiversity conservation, land use change, and human use of natural resources.
He is a member of the Global Young Academy—a global organization of young scientists where he co-leads a working group—Science Diplomacy in South Asia. He was a fellow for the global assessments of Biodiversity at the Intergovernmental Panel for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) from 2016-2019 and lead author for the assessments of sustainable use of wild species at IPBES from 2018-2021. He is an avid traveller and an enthusiast photographer.