Nadja is skilled in working across disciplines, management levels, and academe/practice to resolve complex water and sustainability challenges within the mining and resources sector. She recently joined The University of Queensland in Australia as a Senior Lecturer in the School of Chemical Engineering and was previously an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Mine Water Management and Stewardship at The University of British Columbia in Canada. Nadja also has practical experience, having previously consulted as a Water Specialist for the International Finance Corporation and as a Water Stewardship principal for SLR Consulting. In her early career, Nadja gained operational and corporate experience in the mining, oil and gas, paper manufacturing, and fertilizer sectors in Australia and worked as a graduate engineer for Rio Tinto.
Within her research program, Nadja develops tools, frameworks and models to better conceptualize, measure, assess and communicate water-related risks to diverse stakeholders including companies, investors, Indigenous rights-holders, communities and governments. She also has a growing interest in applications of artificial intelligence (especially large language models) to enhance environmental governance and to assess and improve sustainability performance. In teaching, Nadja is passionate about training engineers to extend their core skillsets to work more effectively at the interface of policy, business, and society.
Nadja’s leadership and governance experience has included serving on the Board of Directors for Genome BC, Canada, and while at UBC she led the academic direction for several interdisciplinary, cross-campus research clusters including the BRIMM Water Stewardship theme and the UBC Future Minerals Initiative.