Prosun Bhattacharya awarded the George Burke Maxey Distinguished Service Award 2021

Prosun Bhattacharya  is a Professor of Groundwater Chemistry and Coordinator of the KTH-International Groundwater Arsenic Research Group at the Department of Sustainable Development, Environmental Science and Engineering (SEED). His research interest is in the field of drinking water contamination from groundwater sources in different parts of the world, especially focusing on geogenic contaminants – arsenic and fluoride. He has coordinated the flagship Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency supported action research and implementation project “Sustainable Arsenic Mitigation-SASMIT” Community driven initiatives to target arsenic safe groundwater as sustainable mitigation strategy in Bangladesh (2007-2017).

He is currently leading a project on “Enhancing private sector capacity for scaling up access to safe drinking water - policy, systems strengthening and sustainable service delivery” in collaboration with UNICEF-Bangladesh and the Department of Public Health Engineering, Government of Bangladesh . He is also leading the Sida funded bilateral Research Capacity Building programs between Sweden and Tanzania as well as Sweden and Bolivia, focusing on drinking water contamination from groundwater sources and treatment. He has been previously honored as the Fellow of the Geological Society of America in April 2012 and the International Water Association (IWA Fellow) in September 2018. Prosun has been also been conferred with the “STE International Achiever Award, 2019” by the Save the Environment Foundation in recognition of his distinguished work in the field of Environmental Geochemistry and Water Quality Analysis as well as the widely acclaimed research on groundwater management that has triggered path breaking research and several projects and motivated young scientists across the world.

Prosun has authored more than 500 peer-reviewed journal articles and peer-reviewed conference proceedings, mostly on groundwater and sustainable development, which have been cited for more than 16000 times.

About the George Burke Maxey Distinguished Service Award

Award Citation

Dr. Prosun Bhattacharya has provided extraordinary service to the global hydrogeology community as well as GSA. He has been instrumental in propagating modern hydrogeology teaching and research in several parts of the world including Argentina, Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Chile, Costa Rica, Ghana, India, Nepal, Tanzania, Turkey Pakistan, Sweden, and the US. An elected Fellow of GSA and International Water Association (IWA), Prosun has also been the GSA Hydrogeology Division representative to the GSA International Section. Prosun has convened topical sessions for Hydrogeology Division at the GSA Annual Meetings, for every year, since 2006 till this year, counting to a total of 50+ topical sessions.

Dr. Bhattacharya has made an outstanding contribution in the field of water sciences, especially concerning a holistic understanding the geogenic contamination of groundwater sources use for drinking in different parts of the world. Understanding the challenges linked with the occurrence of arsenic and fluoride in groundwater systems across the globe. He has been the founding organizer for the International Arsenic Congress, as well as the founding Editor-in-Chief for the Elsevier Journal, Groundwater for Sustainable Development. He has also been associate editors for several other journals like Journal of Hydrology, Environmental International.

Award Citation by Abhijit Mukherjee