Professor Ryan Alaniz to Attend White House Water Summit on March 22

Cal Poly Professor Ryan Alaniz will attend the White House Water Summit on Tuesday, March 22, in Washington, D.C. The event aims to raise awareness of priority water issues and potential solutions in the U.S. and catalyze ideas and actions to help build a sustainable and secure water future.

The White House Water Summit will bring together stakeholders from state, local, and tribal governments, as well as the public, private, academic, nonprofit, and other sectors to discuss approaches for ensuring that everyone in the nation has access to sufficient water when and where they need it. Attendees will have the opportunity to visit a demonstration space featuring interactive examples of solutions to water challenges.

“I am honored to discuss water security issues at the federal level,” said Alaniz, who organized Cal Poly’s Disaster by Drought Summit, a resilience conference with United Nations University, last fall. The invitation to the event at the White House comes after he submitted a policy brief to the National Security Council.

Alaniz is an assistant professor in the Social Sciences Department at Cal Poly and a United Nations University affiliated scholar. He holds a master’s degree in Latin American studies from UC Santa Barbara and a doctorate in sociology from the University of Minnesota.

He has won major fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, Fulbright, International Social Science Council, and National Science Foundation. After spending almost 20 years working on various grassroots development projects in the Global South, his current research investigates the social consequences of drought, disaster resettlement, and transformative pedagogy.