Harini Nagendra is Director of the Research Center at Azim Premji University and leads the University’s Center for Climate Change and Sustainability. Over the past 25 years, she has been at the leading edge of research examining conservation in forests and cities of South Asia from the perspective of both landscape ecology and social justice. For her interdisciplinary research and practice, she has received several awards including the 2009 Cozzarelli Prize from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the 2013 Elinor Ostrom Senior Scholar Award and the 2017 Clarivate Web of Science Award. Her publications include the books “Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present and Future” (Oxford University Press, 2016) and “Cities and Canopies: Trees in Indian Cities” (Penguin, 2019, with Seema Mundoli) as well as recent papers in Nature, Nature Sustainability, and Science. Professor Nagendra writes a monthly column, "The Green Goblin," in the Deccan Herald newspaper and is a well-known public speaker and writer on issues of urban sustainability in India. She is also the author of a historical mystery fiction series set in 1920s colonial Bangalore.

Professor Nagendra was a lead author on the Fifth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR5) reports, and a past science committee member of DIVERSITAS and the Global Land Programme. She engages with international science and policy through her involvement as a steering committee member of the Future Earth Programme for Ecosystem Change and Society, and the Future Earth Urban Knowledge Advisory Network.