Nicole Behnke, MSPH 2019, Environmental Sciences and Engineering, David L. Boren Fellowship Recipient
Ahuja supports student travel to address water issues in developing countries, promoting research and field experience in water, sanitation, and hygiene (WaSH) topics.
After a successful career with the pharmaceutical company Novartis and now as owner and president of a pharmaceutical consulting firm, Ahuja Consulting, Satinder (“Sut”) Ahuja, PhD, has one dominant interest: water.
“It’s a major problem worldwide, including in advanced countries like the United States. Water is not present in unlimited quantities,” Ahuja says. “Fresh water availability is much smaller, and we continuously pollute it in various ways.”
Ahuja’s interest in water began about 50 years ago during a United Nations aid trip to Senegal with Novartis. Since then, Ahuja has organized an American Chemical Society fact-finding mission and workshop to address arsenic contamination of water in Bangladesh; presented papers on water in Bangladesh, Europe and the United States; contributed to water symposia and conferences; and written 10 books on the subject.
Crediting his long-ago travel for sparking his own interest in water, last year Ahuja funded travel for a student practicum through The Water Institute to enable a student to gain international field experience and address water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH) issues in a developing country.
Nicole Behnke, MSPH 2019, environmental sciences and engineering, received Ahuja’s funding and traveled to Amman, Jordan, for her global practicum during the summer of 2018. She interned with World Vision International (WVI) and focused on WaSH issues related to Syrian children and families at the Azraq refugee camp, and worked on her thesis on WaSH and environmental health services for displaced populations.
“One great side effect of doing qualitative research is that you get all the insight you need to answer your research questions, but you also just learn a lot about the field itself,” Behnke says.
Behnke has presented her results at the Water and Health Conference, submitted her work to the International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health, and finished her thesis. She was chosen as one of 106 students nationwide to receive a David L. Boren Fellowship for 2019, which will fund her study of Modern Standard Arabic at the Qasid Arabic Institute in Amman.
