The Panel of Instructors & Facilitators

Your instructors all have significant experience in research and education on hydrologic topics.

Instructors on our panel for this course from India are

DSC Photo Dattakumar Chaskar, Director, NWA, Pune

A postgraduate in "Design Engineering " from IIT, Mumbai, he joined the Central Water Engineering (Group 'A' ) Services of Central Water Commission as Assistant Director in 1991. Since then he has worked in various directorates of CWC in the capacity of Assistant director/Deputy Director. Presently, he is working as a Director and Core Faculty member at the National Water Academy. For more details pl. visit http://nwa.mah.nic.in/faculty.html

Sunil Kumar, Director, NWA

Sunil Kumar, Director, National Water Academy isa 1997 batch CWES Officer. He pursued his Bachelor of Engineering (MechanicalEngg) from Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra and M.S. in EuroHydroinformatics and Water Management from Euro-Aqaue which is a consortium of5 European University. He was one of 28 globally selected students for pursuinghis master course by European Commission for Erasmus Mundus Scholarship. Formore details about him, pl visit: http://nwa.mah.nic.in/faculty.html

Mitra   Sidhartha Mitra, Dy. Director, NWA

Sidhartha Mitra is a 2002 batch CWES Officer. He has joined as Assistant Director at CWC Headquarter, New Delhi in Sept 2004. He is Bachelor of Engineering (Civil Engineering) from Jadavpur University, Kolkata and M.Tech in Transportation Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.. For more details about him, pl visit: http://nwa.mah.nic.in/faculty.html

Rathore  Manish Rathore, Dy. Director, NWA

Manish Rathore is a 2007 batch CWES Officer. He has joined as Assistant Director at CWC Headquarter, New Delhi in July 2009. He is Bachelor of Engineering (Civil Engineering) from Shri G.S. Institute of Technology, Indore and M.Tech in Structural Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.. For more details about him, pl visit: http://nwa.mah.nic.in/faculty.html

Facilitaors for this course from WMO include:


Claudio CaponiMr. Claudio Caponi

Claudio Caponi is a Senior Scientific Officer in the Climate and Water Department of the World Meteorological Organization. Mr. Caponi holds a degree in hydrometeorological engineering from the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas and a degree in applied hydrology from the International Institute of Infrastructural Hydraulic and Environmental Engineering in Delft, The Netherlands.
Mr. Caponi has held various positions in the fields of hydrology and the environment in his country, including that of Director of Hydrology and Meteorology, from 1989 to 1992, and that of Director General of Environmental Information from 1992 to 1996, in the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources of Venezuela. He has also worked as a private consultant and, in 1998, became director of a GTZ (Germany) funded project for the Sanitation of the River Tuy, in support to the then newly created River Basin Authority for River Tuy, the source of water supply for the city of Caracas.
In 1999 Mr. Caponi joined the WMO Secretariat, where he has been the officer responsible for HOMS, the system for technology transfer in hydrology and water resources of WMO. Recently he has been given the responsibility of coordinating all the capacity building activities of WMO in the area of hydrology and water resources.

 MA    Mustafa Adiguzel

Mustafa Adiguzel is Scientific Officer of the WMO Education and Training Office. Prior to joining the WMO in 2007, Mustafa worked for the Turkish State Meteorological Service for 24 years as Meteorological Technician, Engineer, Chief of Satellite Meteorology Division, Director of External Relations Division respectively; and finally he was Director of WMO Regional Training Centre (RTC) in Turkey and organized many international training events. Mustafa holds two MSc degrees one in Applied and Natural Sciences, and one in Electronic Engineering.

Nirina   NIRINA RAVALITERA

Nirina is Scientific Officer, Climate and Water Department, World Meteorological Organization. He is facilitator for this course from WMO.

Instructors for this course from  COMET include :

 MATTMatt Kelsch

Matt is Hydrometeorologist with UCAR's COMET Program in Boulder, CO, USA. Observer for the U.S. Cooperative Climate Network. Coordinator for the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Observing (CoCoRaHS) network.

Matt has a Master of Science degree in Meteorology. He has worked in the Boulder, Colorado hydrometeorological community since 1986, first at the U.S. NOAA laboratory, and then at the UCAR COMET facility since 1998. He has worked in areas of hydrometeorology, remote sensing of preciptitation, flash floods, societal response to weather events, winter weather, climate variability, and local forecasting. He has been an avid weather observer since age 9, and is the official climate observer for Boulder in addition to coordinating precipitation reports from dozens of volunteer observers.

Photo of Thomos Hopson Thomas Hopson

Hopson is a hydrometeorologist who specializes in daily to seasonal forecasts of river discharges. He works on a pioneering flood forecasting program, first applied for Bangladesh, that delivers 1- to 10-day forecasts to residents living along major rivers, alerting them when river levels are likely to rise dangerously. The system, which uses a combination of weather forecast models, satellite observations, river gauges, and new hydrologic modeling techniques, is being applied to other countries. Hopson also works on verifying and, when necessary, calibrating the output from computer weather models.

TimTimothy Alberta

Tim is the Assistant Director for Operations and IT for the COMET Program in Boulder. Although Tim has a Master of Science degree in Atmospheric Sciences, he's been involved in software engineering and systems administration at COMET since 2000, and management since 2003. Prior to COMET, Tim researched the Earth's radiation budget at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton Virginia and taught Synoptic Meteorology at Cornell University. 


Last modified: Thursday, 8 March 2018, 11:36 AM