Dr. habil. Tamara Avellán is a sustainable water specialist with a background in biology-limnology, physical geography and wastewater management. Her 20 year research career revolves around the Water-Energy-Food(-Ecosystem) Nexus, nature-based solutions for pollution control such as constructed wetlands, and sustainable water and wastewater management including unconventional water use and wastewater reuse. While her background is natural science based she has a major interest in participatory research practices to achieve local impact and bridge the science-policy gap. She has developed stakeholder engagement practices for Nexus research and knowledge co-creation strategies for sustainable water management projects.

Dr. Avellán holds an MSc in biology from Wayne State University, a PhD in geography from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität,  and a Habilitation in sustainable water management from the Technische Universität Dresden. She helped in the establishment of the Global Framework for Climate Services Office at the World Meteorological Organization (2011-2015), and led an interdisciplinary group of early career researchers as the Academic Officer of the Water Unit at UNU Flores in Dresden (2016-2019). She recently was a Docent at the University of Oulu, Finland (2020-2024), and is currently a self-employed researcher in Germany, as well as a passionate advocate for environmental education projects in Uruguay. She was and is involved in EU H2020 research projects where she leads the stakeholder engagement, policy impact and sustainability assessment processes.

Dr. Avellán is a long standing member of the International Water Association and the Global Alliance for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity. She is a certified Project Manager through the Project Management Institute since 2013. She has served on a multitude of institutional panels and boards, including UN Water and has published over 30 research articles and book chapters and served as reviewer to a number of international journals.

You can find out more about me by browsing through the pages.