Anu Kumar

Dr Anu Kumar is a Principal Research Scientist in CSIRO’s Land and Water Business Unit and leads the Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Team within the Environmental Contaminant Mitigation and Biotechnologies (ECMB) Program. Dr Kumar is an ecotoxicologist and water quality expert with over 23 years’ experience. Her focus has been on in tracking and identifying pollutants; isolating pollution sources; assessing impacts of aquatic and terrestrial pollution to ecosystems; developing cost-effective and robust monitoring systems; and developing water management guidelines and practices.

Dr Kumar has led projects to provide an integrated “systems approach” to sustainable winery wastewater management. Australia now has the first rigorous and scientifically robust technical information to address winery wastewater management issues as a result of her contributions.

More recently, Anu is leading water quality related projects in India and Myanmar. The capacity building project on “Safe Water” focussed on tools for management of environmental pollution due to pesticides and micro-pollutants in rivers for ensuring safety of water from source to rivers. She also conducted workshops for rural women and children on safe aquaculture and safe use of pesticide. A scorecard system has been developed to track pollution and improve water quality in the Ganga River.

She has strong interest in applying scientific knowledge and innovative solutions to support sustainable agriculture, aquaculture, mining and industrial sectors and strengthen chemical risk assessment and weight of evidence approaches in the contexts of industries social licence to operate, climate change, food security and water quality protection for ecosystem and human health.