Alka Tiwari, a first-year Ph.D. student in the field of Hydrology and Hydraulics in the Lyles School of Civil Engineering, has been awarded the 2019 NASA Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) fellowship to pursue her research work. The FINESST fellowship is a highly competitive program, and Alka is the only recipient this year from Purdue University.

Alka's research project is titled, "Improving post-Hurricane Flood modeling utilizing recent Satellite Products." Her co-advisors are Prof. V. Merwade and Prof. Troy. She was also awarded the Lynn fellowship through Ecological Science and Engineering  (ESE), an interdisciplinary graduate program. Prior to her Ph.D., she was a summer intern with Prof Dev Niyogi at Purdue University studying heavy rain processes. She completed her M.Tech from IIT Kanpur under the guidance of Prof. Shivam Tripathi, a Purdue civil engineering alumnus who did his Ph.D. with Prof. Rao S. Govindaraju (2009). Alka also worked briefly at Indian Institute of  Sciences.

Alka is passionate about helping societies and developing resiliency for natural hazards such as floods. She aspires through her Ph.D. to develop flood prediction tools for landfalling hurricanes. She is an avid traveler, observer, and has a fascination for the Himalayas. She is also interested in working on societal projects that provide educational opportunities, especially for girls in underprivileged regions, to consider a career in mathematics and engineering.