In his aboriginal work, Dr. Mohan Dangi traveled to Kathmandu, Nepal to enactment with K-12 schools and Tribhuvan University, the nationalist assemblage of Nepal, to make renewable vigor curricula. That’s where, arsenic helium walked done the constrictive corridors of the medieval city, helium recovered what would go his life’s enactment — trash.
“Everywhere, I felt the interaction of garbage, heaps and heaps of garbage,” said Dangi, a prof of geography and metropolis and determination planning astatine Fresno State. “That’s erstwhile I felt, yes, processing curricula is important. Yes, grooming teachers is important, but what’s much important is doing thing astir the trash. So, I’m going to displacement my absorption from renewable vigor to trash.”
Dangi would spell connected to gain a master’s successful biology subject and engineering from the Colorado School of Mines, a 2nd master’s and Ph.D. successful geography and biology engineering from Johns Hopkins University, and go a starring adept worldwide successful discarded management. In summation to Nepal, he’s traveled to Madagascar and countries successful Asia, Africa and the Middle East to thatch and counsel governments astir the champion practices successful discarded management.
In September, Dangi was invited by the United States Consul General successful Mumbai and Symbiosis International University, to talk astatine the “Re-Designing Sustainable Urban Waste Management” TechCamp successful India. The nationalist diplomacy programme is hosted by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs astatine the U.S. Department of State and held successful antithetic locations astir the world.
Participants successful TechCamp place real-world challenges and solutions. The four-day campy successful India brought unneurotic 45 people, including technocrats, policymakers, manufacture leaders, researchers, and assorted stakeholders, successful the occidental metropolis of Pune. There, Dangi spoke astir sustainable municipality discarded absorption taxable to economical constraints.
“Many landfills successful India are retired of life, retired of capacity,” Dangi said. “There’s a occupation with however to adjacent these aged landfills. There are nationalist wellness implications, truthful determination has to beryllium a thorough closure of landfills. That’s wherever they request immoderate help.”
Not 1 method volition work, helium said, and what is done successful the United States won’t needfully enactment successful India. The solution has to beryllium amicable to section conditions, its society, its radical and its families, Dangi said.
Dangi is known for his probe connected municipal coagulated discarded absorption successful low-income countries, peculiarly successful Nepal, his location country, and is an adept successful program development. His enactment has led to 9 memoranda of knowing betwixt the United States and Nepali universities. He has developed and reinvented 9 courses for Fresno State and different institutions and has led respective survey overseas courses successful Nepal with students from Fresno State and the University of Wyoming.
In 2021, helium was 1 of 14 elder professors selected nationwide for the prestigious Jefferson Science Fellowship successful which helium served arsenic the biology sustainability advisor for the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance.
Dangi was besides a Fulbright U.S. Scholar and received a Fulbright Specialist Award and the Embassy Science Fellowship.
