Divya Solomon, Research Scientist I at The Water Institute, is a committed interdisciplinary researcher focused on how vulnerable communities can adapt and build resilience to the effects of climate and environmental change. Her research draws from sociology, economics, geography, and gender studies to offer insights into community vulnerability, risk responses and adaptation to identify policy levers to accelerate the shift toward more sustainable and resilient systems.

Divya employs mixed methods in her research, strategically combining quantitative tools such as surveys and spatial analysis, and qualitative methods to map emergent processes and understand how communities respond to short-term and long-term risks and implications for livelihoods and well-being. By utilizing an interdisciplinary mixed methods approach to develop a model for decision making, she proposes solutions that address structural contextual barriers to adaptation while also considering the lived experiences and perspectives of communities.

She began her career at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, contributing to interdisciplinary, multi-institutional research on climate adaptation in semi-arid regions. As a senior research associate, she led a mixed-methods study on groundwater’s role in adaptation and the impacts of groundwater overdraft on community vulnerability. Grounded in a participatory, community-centered approach, her research was published in leading journals and informed climate adaptation policy at local and national levels.

As an Atkinson Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University, Divya led collaborative research on climate-smart agriculture in the Indo-Gangetic region, identifying how policy incentives and technology adoption shape groundwater sustainability and climate resilience while engaging policymakers and stakeholders to translate findings into action.