Dr Aviraj Datta has done his PhD in Environmental Engineering from IIT Madras and his been working in the area of rural wastewater treatment and safe reuse. Increasing water use efficiency is intrinsically linked to building climate resilience of resource-poor rural communities living in the semi-arid tropic villages. He has implemented several constructed wetland-based decentralized wastewater treatment units as part of various watershed development project across Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh over the last 9 years. Building climate resilience among the resource-poor rural communities living in the semi-arid tropics through the valorization of agro-waste, bio-waste and wastewater has been his primary career objective. He has been working with rural communities in tribal villages across India for last several years to improve their livelihood through scientific interventions. Monitoring of aquatic weed infestation and bio-mining of aquatic weeds for value generation is one of his research interests. He has published 14 peer-reviewed journal articles and 7 book chapters. Dr. Aviraj is GATE scholar and a recipient of DAAD fellowship. For his PhD thesis, he received the GE-Eco-magination award at the 51st convocation of IIT Madras. At present, he is based in ICRISAT Odisha office in Bhubaneswar and coordinating ICRISAT project activities in Odisha.