Nadja Kunz

Nadja's work centres on identifying, modelling and mitigating complex water and sustainability challenges within the industrial sector, with a focus on mining and resources. 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 technical skillsets to work more effectively at the interface of policy, business, and society.

Nadja holds UQ degrees in Chemical Engineering (Honours Class I), Business Management, and a PhD in Interdisciplinary Engineering through the Sustainable Minerals Institute (SMI). Thereafter, Nadja completed postdoctoral research at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) in Switzerland. From 2017-2025, Nadja was a faculty member at The University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada (promoted to Associate Professor in 2024), where she was jointly appointed across the School of Public Policy & Global Affairs and the Norman B Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering. She also held an NSERC Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Mine Water Management and Stewardship.

Throughout her career, Nadja has also gained applied experience through a variety of roles across sectors and companies, including with Rio Tinto, BP, Incitec Pivot, Visy Paper, SLR Consulting and the International Finance Corporation (World Bank Group). Her leadership experience has included serving on the Board of Directors for Genome British Columbia, 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. Nadja brings a global perspective to her work, with fieldwork locations that have included Australia, Canada, Mongolia, Peru, and Ethiopia.