Dr. Priya Banerjee
she/her · @priya-banerjeeAcademic ResearcherSenior Research Fellow, Cambridge Centre for Climate Repair · adaptation pathways for coastal megacities
Project portfolio · 4
Coastal Futures Adaptation Program
2024A five-year research program modelling adaptation pathways for 14 coastal cities across the Indian Ocean and West Africa. Downscaled climate ensembles meet city procurement realities.
Chennai 2023 Floods Forensic Postmortem
2024Independent forensic analysis of the December 2023 Chennai flooding event combining ERA5 reanalysis, satellite flood-extent imagery and ward-level damage data. Identified four governance failures with named recommendations.
Bengaluru Cooling Action Plan
2024Designed the city's first cooling-action plan — passive cooling guidelines for new construction plus a heat-island mitigation playbook for ward-level officers. Currently being adapted for Hyderabad and Surat.
South Asia Monsoon Pathways under SSP3-7.0
2023Three-year academic study downscaling CMIP6 ensembles for monsoon onset and intensity across South Asia under high-warming scenarios. Open dataset cited in 47 follow-on papers.
About
I lead the Coastal Futures group at Cambridge — we model adaptation pathways for 14 Asian and African coastal cities under SSP2-4.5 and SSP3-7.0. Published 38 peer-reviewed papers. Increasingly spending time bridging research and city planning offices — translating downscaled climate ensembles into infrastructure choices that procurement teams can actually act on.
Expertise
Experience
- Senior Research FellowUniversity of CambridgeOct 2019 — present
- Scientist EIndian Institute of Tropical MeteorologyJul 2013 — Sep 2019
- Post-doctoral ResearcherMIT Joint Program on Global ChangeSep 2011 — Jun 2013
Education
- MIT· Ph.D. Atmospheric Science2011
- IIT Delhi· M.Tech. Earth Sciences2006
- Presidency College Kolkata· B.Sc. Physics2004