Mathew Kurian is consortium lead for the Belmont Forum project on cyber-enabled disaster resilience involving partners at Penn State University, Cranfield University, University of Sao Paulo, UNHABITAT, Geneva and Ministry of Water and Irrigation, Tanzania. He was previously head of the Capacity Development and Governance Unit at United Nations University, Germany where he established the Africa Points of Excellence consortium on drought risk monitoring by negotiating agreements with respective ministries in Ethiopia, Malawi and Tanzania. He served as the focal point for implementation of a Memorandum of Understanding between UNU-FLORES and UNHABITAT focused on development, validation and pilot-testing of a monitoring methodology for Sustainable Development Goal target 6.3. Dr Kurian previously served as a Senior Water and Sanitation Specialist at The World Bank and has held faculty positions at University College London (UK) and UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education (Netherlands). He began his career as a Robert S. McNamara Fellow at Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI) and subsequently served as a Dutch government supported Associate Expert at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) offices in Thailand, Sri Lanka and Ethiopia.
