ICIMOD Mountain Chairs promote the mountain agenda

Given their unique individual professional and academic strengths, we had appointed two ICIMOD Mountain Chairs: Dr Jyoti Prakash Tamang of Sikkim University, India, and Dr Christopher Scott of the University of Arizona, USA. In their roles as Mountain Chairs, they have both actively promoted the mountain agenda in the region and beyond as outstanding scholars from member institutions of the Himalayan University Consortium. They hold the chair for two-year terms each, from 2019-2021 and 2020-2022, respectively.

In his capacity as ICIMOD Mountain Chair, Dr Tamang visited several academic institutions and universities in Myanmar in early 2020 and helped strengthen the HUC network. In addition to speaking at various high-level events virtually, he also led the organization of the HUC webinar series on traditional foods and their role in health and nutrition security in the HKH.

Dr Scott collaborated with HUC in conducting a three-week long online course on water-energy-food nexus in May-June 2020, which was the first among a series of online courses that ICIMOD ran even during the COVID-19 pandemic using a virtual platform. During his tenure, he plans to focus on building momentum for water and energy resources cooperation across the HKH.