Elfatih Eltahir

Dr. Elfatih Eltahir, professor of civil and environmental engineering at MIT. Dr. Eltahir earned a B.S. in civil engineering from the University of Khartoum in Sudan in 1985; an M.S. in hydrology from the National University of Ireland in 1988; and the S.M. in meteorology and the Sc.D. in hydroclimatology, both from MIT in 1993. Dr. Eltahir’s research focuses on the regional climate and hydrology of tropical regions. He developed a theory for how regional-scale vegetation distribution shapes the dynamics of monsoons, and studied the impact of deforestation on the hydrology and climate of the Amazon and West Africa. He explored the connections between natural variability in the Nile flow and the El Nino phenomenon, and demonstrated the potential for using such connections to improve predictability of the Nile floods. His recent work focuses on the connections of water and disease in Africa.