Athra Khamis

Athra Khamis is a non-resident scholar with the Climate and Water Program at the Middle East Institute and a climate change analyst at the UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment. Her areas of expertise include climate change scenarios, atmospheric composition, water resource analysis, environmental ecosystems, and sustainability.

Athra is taking part in different sustainable communities and is a member of the United People Group, the Future Sustainability Leaders program at Masdar City, and youth forums at the International Renewable Energy Agency in the UAE.

Previously, Athra was a teaching and research assistant at Khalifa University, where she worked on exploring halophyte hydrodynamics and the role of vegetation traits on ecosystem response to the disturbance of climate and atmosphere in coastal ecosystems. Athra extracted data from the only mangrove measurement station in the MENA region, created a program analyzing the traits of 60 mangrove species around the world, and participated in several conferences discussing mangrove productivity under future atmospheric fertilization scenarios.

Athra also worked as a research assistant at the University of Sharjah, focusing her research work on the effect of climate change on drought, using temperature and precipitation metrological indices to assess drought and its propagating effects to urge policy development.
One of her research projects won second place in the Asia Conference on Environment and Sustainable Development (ACESD) 2019 conference in Japan and was published accordingly.

Athra’s received a B.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Sharjah and an M.S. in Water and Environmental Engineering (water resources track) from Khalifa University of Science and Technology.