"Sanketa Kadam didn't set out to study climate science. After pursuing architecture as an undergraduate in Mumbai, India, and receiving a master's in urban and regional design at the New York Institute of Technology, Kadam found herself constantly wondering about how climate impacts would affect her projects as an architect and urban designer. These underlying questions, she realized, were the ones she wanted to spend her time focusing on."
"I had what you might call an unconventional pathway into science. I trained and worked as an architect and urban designer, and in that work, I kept running into questions like extreme heat, flooding risk, energy use and air quality. Over time, I realized, I didn't just want to design around those impacts; I wanted to understand the underlying physical processes driving them. That curiosity pushed me to pivot into science, where I could connect real world problems to the data behind them."
Sanketa Kadam transitioned from architecture and urban design into climate science after recognizing climate impacts on built-environment projects. She completed an M.A. in Climate and Society at the Columbia Climate School and worked two years at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies Climate Impact Group. She is now a Ph.D. student in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia, researching compound extreme events in India and their impacts on crops and farmland with advisors Alex Ruane and Mingfang Ting. Mentorship from several women scientists, including Sulochana Gadgil, supported and inspired her scientific trajectory.
Read at State of the Planet
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