Arindam Malakar, PhD

Bio Summary

Arindam Malakar, Ph.D., Water Research Scientist: He is a new addition to the NWC team and transitioned from a postdoctoral position to a research assistant professor position in 2021. Malakar began his association with NWC as a postdoctoral researcher in May 2017. Malakar received his Ph.D. in April 2017 at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Sciences, Kolkata, under the University of Calcutta, India, one of the top-ranking research facilities in India. During his Ph.D., Malakar was selected for the prestigious “Water Advanced Research and Innovation (WARI)” Internship Program, supported by the Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, the Daugherty Water for Food Institute (DWFI) and the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF). He has received the Young Scientist award from the Materials Research Society of India for his excellent research in improving water quality. Malakar’s academic home is in the School of Natural Resources. He works with the local stakeholders and leads research efforts to understand the impact of land surface processes influenced by agricultural activities on the state groundwater quality and validate and verify next-generation cropping system models. His research focuses on understanding nitrogen, carbon, and metal dynamics in the agroecosystem and critical zone.

Malakar’s research interests include:

• Identifying the influence of surface processes in agroecosystems on the occurrence of anthropogenic and geogenic contaminants in the critical zone.
• Developing vadose zone-centric technologies to mitigate groundwater pollutants.
• Integrate experimental and modeling approaches to understand nanoscale hydrogeochemical transformation in the root-pore water-soil system.

Currently, he is developing a critical zone research program at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln.