Dr Anu Kumar

Dr Anu Kumar is a Principal Research Scientist in CSIRO’s Environment Business Unit within the Industry Environments Program. Dr Kumar is an environmental toxicologist and risk assessor with over 23 years’ experience. Her focus has been on in tracking and identifying pollutants; isolating pollution sources; assessing impacts of pollution to aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems; developing cost-effective and robust monitoring systems; and developing waste 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.

Anu has led 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.