Sonu Khanal (Ph.D.) has over 12 years of experience in providing technical leadership for projects related to the water-energy-food nexus, extreme hydro-climatic events, river floods, droughts, compound coastal floods, multivariate statistical models, ensemble modeling, climate risk assessment, and hydropower development. His experiences were obtained at the Institute of Engineering (IOE, Nepal), International Centre for Integrated Mountain and Development (ICIMOD, Nepal), Practical Action Consulting (PAC, Nepal), Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI, the Netherlands), Vrije Universiteit (VU, Amsterdam, the Netherlands), and FutureWater.

While at FutureWater, Sonu worked with quantitative methods, simulation models (SPHY, VIC, WEAP, SWAT, HEC-RAS, HEC-HMS), geographic information systems (ArcGIS, QGIS), and satellite observations. He is skilled in analyzing multidimensional hydro-meteorological information using R, Python, and GIS-based applications. He is also experienced in QGIS plugin development and R-Shiny-based applications for climate and hydrological analysis and database management.

Over the last year, he focused on flood and drought risk studies in European catchments, the operationalization of probabilistic flood forecasting in pilot basins with governmental institutions, and forecasting drought impacts on crop yield and water supply systems using novel, state-of-the-art machine learning techniques. Sonu has international working experience across Europe, Asia, and Africa, and has collaborated with national and international clients such as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, national and local governments, river basin organizations, science foundations, universities, and research organizations.