overview

• Prof. (Dr.) Aliya Naz is a environmentalist with keen interest to understand the subtle gap that exists between the two diverse disciplines of natural sciences and human ecology. In my PhD thesis, I ask a question.; what is the effect of Chromium pollution on the resident, marginalized, socially ostracized population of Sukinda Chromite mine (The largest Chromite mine of India) and biodiversity of the region? Hence, I studied the health risk on the population exposed to Cr-pollution. I tried to assess the metal speciation and tried to answer the question, how metal behaves in a polluted environment which is of foremost importance for evaluating the toxicity of these pollutants on biota.
  As a mitigation measure of Cr- pollution, I tried to device a microbial bio-remediation process by acclimatizing the native sludge of the area at varying Cr(VI) dose. I have worked on the metal pollution from assessment to bioremediation including microbial bioremediation and phytoremediation.
  Parallely, I also worked to understand the effect of metal pollution on the poverty stricken, socially marginalized populace of Indian Sunderbans in a team endevour. I tried to pre-tune the already existing USEPA risk model by incorporating human component through social survey using PRA (Participatory Rural Appraisal) tools like WRT (Wealth Ranking Tool) and FGD (Focus group discussion). In future work, I envision to address the complex problems of pollution and sustainability in an interdisciplinary light interpreting the diverse disciplines of environment science and sociology.