Chandra A Madramootoo

Dr. Chandra Madramootoo is a Distinguished James McGill Professor in the Department of Bioresource Engineering. He created the Brace Centre for Water Resources Management in 1999, and was its Founding Director. He led funding for large scale, multidisciplinary, national and international water, environmental, and climate change projects. He was Dean of the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences from 2005 to 2015, and established the Margaret Gilliam Food Security Institute, the Faculty Internship Program, the Integrated Water Resources Management Program, and the Food Safety and Quality Program, amongst other initiatives.

His research interests are focused on the issue of growing water scarcity and concerns about climate change, developing new technologies to conserve limited freshwater supplies and increase crop water productivity. He focuses on developing irrigation systems and techniques which can apply precise amounts of water, taking spatial field properties, and crop type and growth stage into account. He has developed innovative technologies to predict crop water requirements, and also studies the impacts of various water management practices on greenhouse gas emissions.

Professor Madramootoo was President of the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage from 2008 to 2011. He was Chair of the Board of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, and was Vice Chair of the Board of the International Development Research Centre of Canada. He currently serves as a member of the steering committee of the United Nations FAO Global Framework on Water Scarcity in Agriculture. He has received several awards including the World Irrigation Prize, he has been inducted in the Overholt International Drainage Hall of Fame, he is a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada, a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, has been awarded a DSc (honoris causa) by the University of Guelph, and is a recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal.